By now most of you have seen this shoe a million times. Re-released for the first time in May of 1999 this color flew off the shelves. It was the first time we saw them since 1989. You’ve seen them in countless movies, and tv shows over the years and I’m going on record as saying this: The 1999 Jordan IV retro sparked what everyone today knows as “sneaker culture”. Thats right, you see over the years Nike had brought back certain shoes, and certain shoes were always a staple such as the Air Force 1. But the single most important Retro EVER is the 99 Jordan IV. Up until then, retro’s didn’t receive much attention. In 1994 the I’s, II’s, and III’s all top notch retro’s flopped heavily. Why the sudden change? Well for one, the group that is responsible for birthing this culture was still in high school, junior high, and middle school thus they didn’t have the funds to buy them. When the IV’s dropped in 99 most had some sort of job and were able to pick them up. The white/cement color way lingered a little bit more. So anyhow back to what I was saying earlier. The 99 Retro IV birthed an entire culture. It increased the interest and demand for other shoes in the Jordan line and ultimately increased demand for other shoe older models. Consumers then turned to the older clothing which at the time could only be had on eBay. Boutiques, and opportunists saw great potential in basically stealing old designs and putting certain twists on them to keep the lawyers off their backs. With the older style clothing came the neon color’s, vintage looking accessories and so on and so forth. People then took certain vintage styling and completely flipped the script on them. Most of what you see on sites today such as hypebeast or highsnobsociety are ideas and products stolen from established or now defunct brands of the 70’s,80’s and 90’s. This shoe is definitely a legend among legends (in reference to sneakers that is ;)). Below are pictures from the DeFY. New York photo vault enjoy!
