Nike Air Huarache History - 30th Anniversary
- Bradley Martinez
- Jan 8, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 11, 2021
2021 marks the 30th Anniversary for the that started it all for me, Nikes Air Huarache. This all time classic was built like no other Nike shoe as the time being the first not to don Nikes famed Swoosh.
The Nike Air Huarache is one of the most successful and well established shoes within their archive. For those who aren’t aware, the history of the huarache is one of the most interesting out of all of Nike’s shoes in my opinion. Not only that this shoe although was design by Tinker Hatfield, other legends such as Sandy Bodecker, Mike Quinn and Michael Donohue also assisted on the development process.
Before getting into that, lets start with the design story. Who else would design such a popular shoe other than Tinker Hatfield himself. The main idea behind the shoe was very simple and used on their marketing campaigns, ‘Stripped to the Bare essentials’. This included the clear lack of Swoosh branding as well. Tinkers original inspiration came from a water skiing bootie, he wanted the huarache to feel almost sock like to secure your foot within the shoe when you’re running creating what they called Dynamic Fit. - Stripping away the heel counter found in most running shoes gave the wearer a new found comfort.
As for its interesting story - believe or not, the huarache before its release was going to be discontinued. IMAGINE! The shoe received such little orders that for Nike it didn’t see a great business plan to release it. One of the reasons was down to the lack of branding. Think, back then branding was key and arguably as important as the product performance. Nike’s Swoosh is currently getting in full flow as one of the best sportswear company’s in the world, so to take all swooshes off the shoe actually put some people off along with its garish deisgn. The shoe initially received an order of only 50 pairs from one store! One team member at Nike believed in the design so much, he ordered 5000 pairs under Nikes nose and took them down the NYC Marathon at the time and sold them out the boot of his car. Boom! Sold out, after that day the orders came from 50 to 250,000 units.
The shoes physical make up and technical ideas over the years, has been used by multiple brands as a deisgn reference and many Nike products have taken inspiration from it like the Mowabb, Huarache Air Trainer, the lesser known Huarache Plus and many more.
As factories change and shoe lasts and destroyed or lost the Nike Air Huarache's shape of has changed slightly over the years but what shoe hasn’t. Within many Nike runners what started off a nice pointed toe box, became a boxed out shape that was corrected with the 2017 OG re-releases. We can only hope that this year the attention to detail does this historic pair justice.
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