How Gucci invented the luxury trainer
And transformed women’s footwear forever. By Anna Murphy
Picture, say, a scene from Jane Austen’s Emma. What are Emma Woodhouse and the other female characters wearing on their feet in the book? Definitely not trainers, needless to say. This was a footwear phenomenon still many years off at that point.
If truth be told, these women would not even have been shod in shoes as we understand them today. When Isabella Knightley suggests walking home in the snow to her husband, for example, he exclaims, “Walk home! You are prettily shod for walking home, I dare say. It will be bad enough for the horses.”
Rich women, in contrast to rich men, were largely indoor creatures, and their footwear was more akin to slippers. A lady’s shoes were supposed to be dainty, not practical. They were not designed for sallying forth.
It is easy to take for granted that how things are now — whether that’s related to how we dress, or how we live more generally — is not how they have always been. We assume that shoes are made for walking. That wasn’t always the case.
Similarly, we forget that trainers, the most ubiquitous footwear of our epoch, were originally made for sporting endeavours, not for mere walking. Just a generation or two ago, depending on your age, the idea of trainers being worn for anything other than sports was unimaginable. The conception of them as a luxury item was even more impossible.
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And yet the 21st-century equivalents of Emma and Isabella may easily be dining out at Louie in designer trainers. When I was at the London restaurant the other night, one of the capital’s sceniest, I counted at least a dozen pairs.
Posh trainers may seem a million miles away from some intricately embellished satin shoes from the early 19th century, yet they possess one striking similarity: both branded sneakers and embroidered slippers clearly signal that they cost money, and thus confer status on the wearer.
One more parallel? That it’s just as unlikely that these sneakers would be worn for actual sport as that those shoes were for proper walking. If you are actually planning on exercising you don’t put on the Chanel numbers that will have cost you over a grand. You put on your APLs or your Nikes.
The other messaging involved is indeed oppositional. Those slippers signposted that the wearer was too well bred, too ladylike, to need to walk anywhere and/or engage with the masculine hurly-burly of the great outdoors. Trainers, in contrast, communicate that you can travel fast; can — whether you are a man or woman — cover some ground.
Indeed, the modern-day lure of the entire genre is predicated on the notion that the wearer may break into a sprint at any minute, and is thus youthful, nimble, streamlined. These are qualities that are valued as much in our culture as a static, fragile take on femininity was once upon a time.
What we wear on our feet reflects societal assumptions. The shoe fits, in other words. Or rather, these days, the trainer does. Last year the global trainer market was estimated at $72.7 billion, projected to rise to over $100 billion by 2026. No luxury brand can afford to ignore figures like those, and no luxury brand does.
Again, we overlook what a recent phenomenon luxury trainers in particular are. It was Gucci that changed the game in 1984. That was when the Italian label launched a no-longer-humble tennis shoe branded with its signature green and red house colours.
It currently has 225 different trainer options on its website. This includes some tennis shoes that look remarkably similar to that earlier incarnation, yet are further amped up by way of ombré crystals, on sale for £865 (gucci.com).
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The late Maurizio Gucci is now largely remembered for the unfortunate fact that his ex-wife had him murdered. Yet that debut pair of luxe kicks appeared on his watch. It was during the 1980s that he began the transformation not just of his family business but (relatedly) of the luxury industry in general.
Later there would be Tom Ford, of course, who was hired as creative director in 1994 and further accelerated Gucci’s rebirth. But Andrea Morante, who collaborated with Maurizio and now heads up a private equity firm, has observed that he “understood ahead of time that the luxury industry was about to embark on and experience a global renaissance”. He was also “convinced Gucci had an incredible potential that had not been fully expressed”.
Those long-ago tennis shoes were a first step on the path towards realising that potential, as well as towards one of the most significant shifts in the luxury industry as a whole. They were also a first step to changing our world, one that may legitimately be called the trainer age. Game, set and match, Gucci.
