Trainers : the worlds at our feet and the multiple investments in high performance shoe technology

The last three decades in sports-shoes and trainer design has witnessed the humble sneaker transformed into the performance enhancing equipment of the professional sporting elite. The rhetoric of trainer manufacturers tells us that the features developed for world-class athletes are now democratised for everyday wear. The main features of this period in the cultural history of sports shoes has been defined by the competing economic and design forces of the global players Nike, Reebok and Adidas, a competition sometimes likened to the Coke and Pepsi wars. The outcome has left the average person owning at least one pair of trainers, but also a sense that these shoes possess capacities far in advance of their own. This presentation will address key factors that profoundly shifted the trainer from a sign of sporting, working-class and practical cultures to an index of global fashionability, fantasy, and object of progressive design's attention. Particular attention will be given to two frontiers of sneaker design; the trend that turns engineering interest back to the athletic foot, resulting in an increasing lightness in shoe-weight and the disappearance of feature-laden cushioning systems. Secondly, it will investigate high profile collaborations between artists, fashion designers and trainer manufacturers resulting in the rapid multiplication of niche-markets in trainer retail and heightened fan interest in collecting and customisation. The Australian magazine Sneaker Freaker has played an important role in developing subcultural interests in collaborations, collecting and customisation both nationally and internationally.