Collecting Sneakers

The passion of collecting sneakers can be expensive. The most common form of sneaker collecting is the buying and selling of sneakers for fun. The use and accumulation of shoes designed for specific sports, particularly basketball and skateboarding, is a common manifestation of it. Sneakerhead is a term used to describe someone who collects sneakers.

In the 1980s, two significant factors-the emergence of basketball, notably Michael Jordan and his namesake Air Jordan brand of shoes introduced in 1985, and the rise of hip hop music-led to the formation of sneaker collecting and ultimately the creation of the sneakerhead culture in the United States. The hip-hop movement gave the sneakers their street cred as status symbols, while the explosion in signature basketball shoes during this era offered the shear diversity needed for a collecting subculture. In the early 2010s, the sneakerhead culture began to take off in the UK and the Czech Republic.

As "athleisure" clothing gained popularity at both the low- and high-ends of the fashion world, sneakerhead culture had fully globalized by the beginning of the 2020s. A well-known example of this is Kanye West's Yeezy brand of low-rise Adidas sneakers, which went far beyond its initial focus on shoes made specifically for basketball use.