Jordans In 1985 And Now: A Frenzy Afoot

Around the country, at shoe stores and malls, a scene repeated itself early Friday morning. Teenagers went crazy trying to buy a pair of shoes. It’s not a new scene. The Air Jordan shoe has been stirring up shopping frenzies since it was introduced back in 1985. This year dior jordan Nike brought a 1996 design, lighting a fire under fans once more. To get a taste of what the original shoe craze was all about, we looked back to Dec. 28, 1985 and this piece from The Post’s Style section: “Crazy for the Chic Sneakers.”

What’s an Air Jordan?

“WHAT’S AN AIR JORDAN?” your 14-year-old screams in disbelief.

It’s that high-top basketball shoe you probably bought your teen-ager a few months ago. If you wince at the memory of the $65 price tag, be consoled. You’re not alone; between 2 1/2 and 3 million other people bought the sneaker this year in a street-fad whirlwind that made it a legend, at least in the annals of sports shoes. And perhaps in the annals of feet.

The shoe has brought Nike about $105 million since last March, according to the company. “It’s far and away the most successful shoe in the history of athletic footwear,” says Chris Van Dyke of Nike. “We would have considered it successful if we had made $2 million to $8 million the first year.”

In its 10-month sales blitz, the Air Jordan far outdistanced even the Stan Smith tennis shoe, which has sold about 7 million pairs over a period of more than dior jordan 10 years, according to David Falk, senior vice president of ProServ, the sports management company that represents both Jordan and Smith.

It all started on Oct. 15, 1984, at a preseason game, when the Chicago Bulls’ heroic Michael Jordan landed on the court sporting his team’s colors on the most unlikely looking pair of high-tops -- black leather with a red Nike “swoosh” stripe and red laces.

As legend goes, the NBA soon threatened to discipline the high-jumping Jordan. There would be a fine of $5,000 if he dared to play an NBA game in those unorthodox things again. Wearing them was some kind of technical foul.

The rest is shoe history. The world of basketball watched Jordan return to the court in modified shoes; Nike had added white, a traditional basketball shoe color, to the Air Jordan line. Then the NBA said, “Okay, okay. We give in.”

Since March, parents around the country have been saying the same thing.

It is widely supposed that black urban teen-agers were the Air Jordan trendsetters. “In our business, it’s all you do, look at feet,” says Dave Fogelson at Adidas, which is coming out with its own autograph Patrick Ewing shoe in May, “and the kids in the urban areas are the first to recognize the new trendy shoe. It’s very important to them, it’s a part of their interests and culture, and so they save up and buy these shoes.”

If the parents didn’t give in, the kids themselves lined up with the cash to blow. And, according to Phillip Fenty, owner of Fleet Feet in Adams-Morgan, the D.C. summer job program for young adults put many a kid in Jordans. “They were fashion-conscious kids,” Fenty says.

From the city the craze spread to the suburbs, and from the young it spread to the younger and to teens at heart. In most cases, claims the corps of shoe sales clerks, the kids came in dragging their parents to the Jordans. Many, but not all, parents were convinced. One mother in Silver Spring says when the craze “for expensive tennis shoes started, I put a ceiling of $35 on all my kids’ shoes.”

“They were a pretty price-insensitive product when they first came out,” says Pete Cain, manager of the all-Nike store on M Street, about the rather hefty price tag of dior jordan the shoes. “But nobody was complaining about it. People were so hot after the shoe that they didn’t care. We got 65 pairs in mid-March which sold almost immediately . . . There really hasn’t been anything like it before, which added to the excitement.”