The Dunk Legacy: the legend of the Nike Dunk The skate shoe that has changed forever the sneaker culture
As one of the most legendary sneaker, the Nike Dunk holds within a fascinating story, full of twists, memorable collaborations, dark moments and success. For many is the skateboard shoe par excellence, and as well the one that erased boundaries between subculture and mainstream, that changed the sneaker game forever.
To the Nike Dunk, and to its history and precious and rare silhouettes, Special Sneaker Club and LacedUp Community dedicate a 3 days exhibition, opening with a talk about the evolution of the sneaker. Marco Rizzi, collector, and expert on sneaker culture guided us through the history of this iconic creation.
The Nike SB Dunk came on the market in 1985, the same year as the legendary Air Jordan 1. Behind the two silhouettes stand the same creator, Peter Moore who has been one of the best designers of the brand from Beaverton, and the features in common with Jordan are many.
The story goes that the name of the project initially was "College Color High", since it was a model made only for College players, and revolving around the use of the colors from NCAA's teams connected with Nike. The name Dunk came alive later when Peter Moore and his team were working on the design.
The first Dunk campaign' slogan was Be True To Your School, a statement that clearly recalls basketball players and their fans.
After the boom, the Dunk encounters a decrease in popularity around the first decade of the 2010s, due to a return of interest in the Air Jordan 1 and also because of the new development in technologies and silhouettes. In 2013 there's a timid come-back, with the Dunk SB Dunk Concord, inspired by the colorway of the homonymous Jordan. The release doesn't attire as it used to, the Pigeon seems long gone.
The real year of the come-back for Dunk is probably 2019. Not only thanks to the collab with Parra but mostly because of the return of the Pigeon, and as well with Off-White x Nike SB Low designed by Virgil Abloh and Futura and the most recent one with Supreme x Nike SB Dunk Low.
In the last years, the thirties' birthday of Dunk and the fifteenth birthday of Nike SB have passed without anyone noticing them, two lost occasions in my opinion. one of the last trends that surprised me most is the boom of the Air Jordan 1, an iconic model for sure, with clean lines that made its way between chinky shoes and model inspired by the end of the 90s. This, for me, has been an important signal for Nike and the return of the Dunks. It seems like, for different reasons compared to the past, the young generation is falling in love with the model, the upcoming months are going to be interesting for Nike and fans.
From Special Sneaker Club the exhibition "Wall of Fame - The Dunk Legacy” runs through the most important stages of the evolution of this legendary sneaker, with the rarest, precious and nowhere to be found Dunks.
The hardest one to find was the "London" by Fragment Design, it took my four years to find a pair in my size, at a good price, and above all, in Europe. I ended up buying them from a Swiss guy in almost a smuggling action. Now I laugh thinking about this episode, but at the time I was terrified.
