Julian X
retired or something, and then Stan acquired
the shoe. There’s a pair I have that I think are
from 1974 or 1975, where it has Stan Smith’s
face on the tongue, but says Haliet and on the
side of the shoe. I know that when I looked
at a U.S. catalog from a year or two later, the
Stan Smith on the side of the shoe had disap-
peared, so I can kind of date them around the
mid 1970s. After that, we had the more classic
French model: His face with the green back,
and the name Stan Smith. That’s the model
we’ve known for decades. So, I have the Haliet
model, the Haliet / Smith model, and then the
regular Stan Smith, and then multiple reissues
after that. There’s no way you can collect all
the Stan Smith models. You wouldn’t have
room, there’s so many variations.
I’ve got some early Rod Laver’s from around
1974, I think. They were made of a mesh and
a very simplistic shoe. The pair I have don’t
even have any stripes on them.
What started to happen with adidas running
shoes in the 1980s. There are people who col-
lect running shoes like the ZX series. They
made a multitude of models, and a lot of them
were made in France. Some of the runners are
quite rare, but depending on the sole, they can
be turning to dust. Then you have the Oregon,
which is a classic, with the webbed sole, and
92 | Classic Kicks | classickicks.com | Volume 2
the Atlanta is a similar shoe to the Oregon.
So you have these technologies sprouting up,
and then some of the famous runners started
getting their own shoes. The running shoe
took off also. That’s the kind of shoe some
people wore. I appreciate the running shoes
now, but as a kid, they didn’t interest me. I
was into the tennis shoes as a kid. The Lendl’s,
the Stan Smith, the 1982 Forrest Hills. Every
now again, when I go home to England, I’ll be
flipping through a photo book and say, “Oh
my God. Remember those?” It’s back to that
nostalgia thing. It’s like certain bands or certain
albums.
Then we were talking about albums covers. I
remember being a kid and flicking though my
dad’s vinyl and seeing those great album covers
like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, with a guy
on fire. I don’t know whether it’s intentional or
unintentional, but it’s like our memory cap-
tures certain parts of our youth, and for some
reason, they’re the ones that stick in the brain.
Obviously, as kids we experience hundreds of
things, but why is it that we only seem to focus
on music? Why does a Wish You Were Here
album bring back memories of me looking
through my dad’s albums? I feel the same with
the shoes. There’s something about that nostal-
gic youth, that we all went though.