Converse - A Cultural History
I’ve seen these shoes before. Thrown into a gym bag, slapping down onto the pavement, gripping the deck of a skateboard, covered in grass stains, dangling over a powerline. Both heels are worn out to the middle of “All Star”. They look like they used to be the bleached white of fresh canvas, and that someone tried routinely to return them to that color after copious puddles and scuffs. Gray stains and a yellow tinge are sunken deep into the canvas uppers. The fuzzy grip on the soles is worn down in patches like the coat of a stray dog. The laces have a kind of dirt gradient, with pure white tips that were probably tucked into the tongue of the shoe after they were tied. The metal grommet vents at the side are dented, and the circular Converse logo on the right smudged. Retro red lettering runs into the blue stitching, but the blue star at its center is pristine, printed with Chuck to its left and Taylor to its right in a looping script. They’re the platonic ideal of a pair of sneakers, rough around the edges, red, white, and blue. They feel like summers at dusk and James Dean with an aftertaste of American athleticism and the military.
They feel like the morning of my twelfth birthday, when I sat at the dining room table with a brown box before me. I opened it, pulling back the paper to reveal a pair of electric blue Converse All Stars.
I’d not so much wanted the sneakers as needed them to complete the physical transformation that often accompanies fan culture for preteen girls. They were worn by the character Hazel Grace Lancaster in the Fault in Our Stars, a saccharine story about two kids with cancer who fall in love, quote Shakespeare to each other, and fly around the world to make out at the Anne Frank house.
I read the Fault in Our Stars 10 times, my teenage hormones raging as I sobbed through the tragic final pages. When they released the movie in 2014, I bought a discounted ticket to the 10 am showing and hopped to later showings throughout the afternoon. I soaked in scene after scene of Hazel wading across the screen in her faded blue Chucks.
The book and its screen adaptation went hand in hand with an entire movement of Tumblr angst, and the sneakers were adopted by all of us. Since it was 2014 and the only thing cooler than wearing Chuck Taylors was painting on them. Entire pinterest boards were devoted to daubing little white clouds containing the quote “Okay? Okay.” on blue Chucks - every detail painstakingly matched to the cover of the book.
Most of us that flocked to these shoes, wore them to midnight screenings, and posted them to our dashboards probably couldn’t tell you who Chuck Taylor was, or why his name was on the side of our shoes. We might have bought Nirvana smiley face t-shirts at Forever 21, but as we wrote quotes and test answers on the rubber soles, we had no idea that we were customizing our Chucks in the exact same manner as Kurt Cobain, who wore Chucks so often that he famously wrote “endorsement” on the toe of one of his pairs as a joke.
Converse have been a part of American culture for almost a century and have undergone many transformations, from being athletic shoes to becoming a symbol of counterculture and rebellion. The original All Star was released in 1917 as a performance basketball shoe. They were created in response to the growing popularity of basketball during the fitness craze of the 1920’s. Their flexible support and considerate design was unlike anything else on the market, but it wasn't until Chuck Taylor, a basketball player, coach, and salesman for Converse, began promoting the shoes in the 1920s that they gained immense popularity. Taylor's endorsement was so influential that Converse added his name to the ankle patch of the shoe in 1932, leading to the nickname Chucks.
The Chuck Taylor All-Stars continued to be popular among athletes for several decades. They were once worn by 90% of the NBA, they were the official shoes of the Olympics in 1936 to 1968, and became the official sneakers of the United States Armed Forces after their frequent use in basic training. However, in the 1950s, they had found a new following among the youth, who began to adopt them as a symbol of rebellion and nonconformity. This shift in attitude towards the shoes was driven by popular culture icons like James Dean and alternative musicians like the Ramones.
They became a blank canvas to project a whole range of subcultural identities. They released the first colored canvas models in 1971, opening up the shoes to a wider audience. People customize their Chucks by drawing on them, adding studs, and even ripping them. Converses’ wholesome American brand image was subverted by those who wanted to make a statement by wearing inexpensive sneakers into the ground. The price point, simple design, and range of colors made them universal and limitlessly customizable, leading to their popularity with the 70’s punks, 80’s metal heads, and 90’s grunge kids.
Like many legitimate symbols of counterculture, they were absorbed by adolescence. I wasn’t the only teen to incorporate them into my image through the movies. Throughout the over 100 year old legacy of the sneakers, they’ve been featured in over 650 films. From Ponyboy and Sodapop in the Outsiders, Danny Zucko in Grease, Rocky Balboa running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum, allowing kids to try on hundreds of personas within a single pair.
My Chucks saw me through junior year of highschool and the phase of young adulthood where I turned on the Fault in Our Stars and all the other cultural markers of my childhood, back to the point where I watched the movie again, not 15 times, but once, to remember what it felt like to care about such a simple story with my whole heart. They met their demise when the sole tore off off the toe, flapping halfway down the shoe during rehearsals for the school musical, arguably one of the more sporting trials I ever put them through. I wore them in toe-flapping denial for another month before I threw them out.
It’s impossible not to wonder what abandoned pair of Converse might have meant for their previous owner. Who were they trying to be? From the basketball court to the streets, they have been worn by people of all ages, genders, and cultures. They have been a symbol of rebellion, counterculture, and individuality, and have carried generations of artists, musicians, activists, and teenagers.
