This is the age of the trainer – or, as so many more people on the planet call it, the sneaker. What was created in the 19th century as a rubber-soled, simply uppered Adidas Prophere Womens form of footwear named “sand shoes” or “plimsolls” has evolved in the 21st into a product of fantastic variety upon which hundreds of millions of people spend Nike Air VaporMax Dames tens of billions of pounds a year. The vast majority of them have a casual relationship with their sneakers; they might recognise that there is a difference between Nike, Puma, Adidas and Reebok Nike Air Vapormax Femme – four trainer titans in a marketplace that jostles with brands – without being more than vaguely engaged in the subtleties of that difference. Yet there is a footwear cognoscenti for whom the sneaker is a subject of deep fascination. Over the last few decades, this dedicated tribe has fuelled the sneaker’s Adidas Superstar Mujer transformation into a valuable commodity.

Even connoisseurs will learn a thing or two from “The Ultimate Sneaker Book”. Published by Taschen, it is an engagingly written and Adidas Temper Run Femme beautifully designed digest of the greatest stories in sneakerdom. It covers the extraordinarily out-there work of American designer Jeremy Scott for adidas (his sneakers incorporated wings and teddy bears) and explores how Kanye West, a rapper and producer who has designed trainers with Reebok, Nike, Louis Vuitton and adidas, has changed the way they are Adidas Superstar Womens marketed. It looks back at sneaker ancient history, with fascinating essays on Reebok’s 1980s Pump sneaker technology (the first trainer – Nike Air Max 95 Femme pictured above – that could be inflated around the foot thanks to a valve hidden in the upper), and includes interviews with the creators of Nike’s enduring Air series. Nike Air Max 2017 Femme Diversions into what might seem like dull footnotes to footwear history – such as the boom-and-bust stories of Eighties skate brands Airwalk and Vision Street Wear – are brought to Nike Air Vapormax Womens life. Reading this fully indexed, 669-page whopper of a tome will turn even the most disengaged sneaker wearer into a fully fledged expert.

The book is based on the content of Sneaker Freaker, a magazine and website that was founded in 2002 and has since become to sneakers what Wisden is to cricket and Vogue is to fashion. Its rise coincided with the Adidas ZX Flux Femme elevation of the lowly sneaker into both a luxury-good category and an emblem of cool. As Simon “Woody” Wood, Sneaker Freaker’s founder and Nike Air Max 95 Femme this book’s editor, notes in his foreword: “Strange, isn’t it, that a few bits of leather and suede sewn onto a slab of rubber and wrapped in nylon thread could mean so much to so many.”In 1973 Puma recruited Nike Air Max 95 Mujer Walt “Clyde” Frazier, the New York Knicks’s star player, to endorse a basketball sneaker – the first time any basketball player had put his www.andrewjoslin.co.uk name to a shoe. It was produced in combed suede and several colourways, with Frazier’s initials stamped in gold on each upper. Puma sold 2m pairs of www.marysiamilewski.fr the shoe in its first year of production. As Frazier says, “They couldn’t keep them in stores in New York City! I tell you it was an ego trip to have that shoe named after me.”