JON MIGDAL
Words: Nick Santora | Photographer: Deven Cucolo
Location: Brooklyn, NY | Age: 39 | Occupation: GM, Event Agency
Collection: 700 T-Shirts
Talking to Jon Migdal had me reminiscing back to the late 1990s, when a sneaker renaissance
was beginning to take shape, thanks to a real underground community fascinated with a hand-
ful of message boards, auction sites, and Japanese magazines. It was a time when you could
dial up your AOL and find everything from original Air Max 95 and Terra Humaras to Inter-
national Dunk retros in crazy colorways and even a nice assortment of vintage Nike running
and basketball sneakers.
One of the many interesting aspects of this conversation is how we got into sneakers through
the same digital and print avenues at the exact same times, but our personal interests led us
in two different directions. While I became infatuated with limited edition reissues of the
sneakers I grew up on, Migdal went and found the actual sneakers that were a part of his life.
This led him down a vintage path and to a collection that is truly one of a kind and priceless.
His esoteric mix of 1980s Nike Basketball Player Exclusives boasts sneakers that many of us
never even knew existed. They were sneakers that you may catch a glimpse of while visiting
the Sports Illustrated image vault, but that’s about it.
I worked on a vintage project with Sneaker News a few years ago where we dove deep into
Migdal’s Nike Basketball PE collection. I suggest you check it out. For this piece, I wanted to
showcase some sneakers that I hadn’t seen before, so we still have a couple of those PE’s in
there, in addition to some other leather high-top pre-Michael Jordan era gems. I even saw a
pair of silver and red Night Track Discos on his desk and a pair of Sock Trainers that were
crumbling to dust, which I included anyway because of the their character and futuristic de-
sign vision.
For a trip back down memory lane wi th the sneakers and stories, flip through these pages and
get to know Jon Migdal.