Trainers make up a large portion of my wardrobe. The styles that I wear on regular rotation— which, at the moment, are my Wales Bonner x Adidas Originals Sambas and Japans (in multiple colors)–sit at the front of my wardrobe, ready to be whipped out at a moment’s notice. But a recent spring clean led me to stumble upon two pairs of Nike Cortez trainers that had been gathering dust on my shoe rack.
One pair is rendered in the original white, blue and red colorway–as famously featured in Forrest Gump and worn by Whitney Houston during her Super Bowl halftime performance in 1991–and the other are a box-fresh white pair with black accents that I bought on Depop a few years back. I kicked myself for having disregarded them for so long, as I rarely buy or keep anything that I don’t wear–and these definitely deserve to be worn. The white, blue, and red pair have been with me for over eight years, and I even used them as a vessel to hand in a university project with a memory-stick attached to the laces (it’s a long story).
The Nike Cortez–searches for which, Lyst reports, have been up 51% over the past six months– are one of the sports behemoth’s bestselling models, and were first conceived in the ’60s by Nike co-founder and coach, Bill Bowerman, with an official debut at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Positioned as a shoe for long-distance runners, its unique design incorporates cushioning with a layer of sponge rubber between the grippy, herringbone outsole and the leather upper–to absorb surface impact–as well as supportive padding for the ball and heel of the foot. I don’t run in mine –but can certainly vouch for the comfort they provide. “The Nike Cortez is a timeless classic,” Drew Haines, director of merchandising at StockX, tells Vogue, adding that the “simple design and comfort factor helped set a new benchmark for athletic footwear,” when it was first released.