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How Nike Created the Air Max Legend

Thirty-four years ago Nike rolled out the Air Max shoe from 1 Bowerman Drive, Beaverton, and it’s safe to say that the sneaker world has never been the same since. The shoe has been hyped, stolen, rapped about, eulogised over and, every March 26, we all bow down in celebration of it all on Air Max Day.

Before you shop the latest Air Max collections at Level Shoes, here are five things you should know about it...

It wasn’t the first Nike shoe to have air in the sole
While the Air Max series gets all the glory, the use of air at Nike was actually introduced almost a decade earlier in the Air Tailwind shoe. Aerospace tech specialist Frank Rudy was the man behind the revolutionary idea, and the shoe debuted at the 1978 Honolulu Marathon. At the time, only six retailers in the Hawaiian capital stocked it – and they sold out fast. The Tailwind had a wider release 12 months later, becoming a shoe beloved of distance runners and setting the bar for all sneaker innovation to come.

It has remained a shoe for runners (almost)
Legendary designer Tinker Hatfield left the Air Max series in 1994, meaning that the iconic 95 silhouette was actually created by Sergio Lozano. Looking to make his mark, the young designer took the shoe away from its running origins for the very first time. Remember, this was a shoe intended to run even on the shelf, with the diagonal lines created by Hatfielf meant to show motion even as it just sat there. “[Sergio] took it in a non-runner direction, because clearly that upper was not meant for running,” Hatfield would later comment.

It became a one-shoe crime wave in Tokyo
While not exactly loved by Hatfield, the Air Max 95 rapidly became one of the most coppable out there – and nowhere more so than in Tokyo. In 1996 the love of US culture in the Japanese capital was fierce, with kids in Harajuku picking up any brand that sounded even remotely American. The discontinued Air Max silhouette from the previous year became hot property, going for huge prices and with people being mugged for the almost impossible-to-find shoe. In a country where street crime was rare, Air Max Hunting was big news… and it all just added to the legend.

When Nike used The Beatles track, “Revolution” on the advert for the original Air Max shoe in 1987, it went on to become one of the most talked about business moments of the 20th century

It got in trouble with The Beatles
When Nike used The Beatles track, “Revolution” on the advert for the original Air Max shoe in 1987, it went on to become one of the most talked about business moments of the 20th century. Although Nike had paid $500,000 between Capitol-EMI and the Michael Jackson-owned ATV Music Publishing, The Beatles, and their lawyers, were outraged. George Harrison demanded that the advert be removed immediately in a $15 million lawsuit. The case was eventually settled out of court and the song removed.

It changed Air to reduce carbon footprint
When Frank Rudy brought his idea from NASA to revolutionise Nike’s sole, they used hexafluoroethane (Freon 116) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) – both gasses that were stable, nonflammable and well-suited to the job. Nike would eventually lean towards using SF6 exclusively right up until 1997, when it discovered it to be a greenhouse gas. While it might not have been legally mandated, Nike wanted to phase out use of something that would contribute to global warming. After hiring chemists, engineers, and even building an analytics lab, in 2006 it announced Nitrogen as the friendlier future of the Air Max sole.

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