Sneakerheads, listen up: a blockbuster exhibition about all things sneakers has landed in Australia. First unveiled by London’s Design Museum, this show is packed with over 400 objects, 200 pairs of shoes, and more surprises, trivia, and fascinating cultural artefacts than you might expect (with a themed fine-dining menu, to boot). If you know and love your kicks, then Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street is your calling card to lace up and head to HOTA Gallery on the Gold Coast.
If, like me, you feel a little out of place in the world of icy clean kicks and coveted drops from ultra-pricey sports shoe brands (and anything remotely sporty, honestly) – you might be surprised by the way that this exhibition will lace you in. I hopped on a flight to the GC to investigate if Sneakers Unboxed could convert this committed ‘Crocs girly’, and found a show that had me on my toes.
The core of subculture is about claiming something that isn't really made for you...
“I mean, it's a fundamental question, isn't it? What is more important: something that is created for the few, or something that is worn by the many?” curator Ligaya Salazar from the Design Museum told me.
Salazar never imagined that an object as ubiquitous as the sneaker would have her travelling the world – but as you’ll discover with the collection she has tailored, a humble sports shoe can serve as an entry point to fascinating histories of design, online commerce, and a global web of niche subcultures.
“I personally am of the opinion that what people wear, and how they wear it, is more important to document. Because actually, it’s less documented than the stuff that is made for, you know, ‘rich people’. I never thought I would be doing this necessarily, but I think it's really important for those stories to be told in a museum context. It's important for people to see themselves, or people like them in other places, in a museum context.”
Ligaya brought Sneakers Unboxed to Australia off the back of touring it to other countries including the Netherlands and Korea, and has added local gems to the collection along the way. (At HOTA, this includes an official pair of green and gold sneakers worn by Aussie athletes at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.)
Ligaya is delighted that HOTA has provided the largest exhibition space that Sneakers Unboxed has ever filled for the Australian edition. Divided into two chapters – ‘Style’ and ‘Performance’ – the exhibition surveys a phenomenon that has challenged performance design, inspired new youth cultures, manifested a competitive resale market, and shaken the world of fashion – including iconic collaborations that shaped the industry over the years with athletes including Chuck Taylor and Michael Jordan.
While the big brand names and celebrity endorsements represented might throw you off, what Ligaya has assembled is actually, in a big way, a social history exhibition. Companies like Nike and Adidas never set out to be fashionable – the cool factor and demand grew organically from regular people seeking, styling and customising their kicks. The first sneaker endorsement by a music act (as opposed to an athlete) didn’t happen until a US marketing rep for Adidas went to a Run DMC concert and saw the band perform their song called ‘My Adidas’.
“One of the nicest connections I've found over the research is this connection to Jordans,” Ligaya explains, talking about Nike’s famous collaboration with basketball player Michael Jordan.
“Jordan 1 is obviously the first style that comes out, it’s very popular and sells out. So Nike just produces loads of them, and they end up being discounted to $10-$20. Skaters start picking them up, because they're comfortable, and they work for the activity they’re doing – and they become so iconic that the skate brands over the ’90s start referencing Jordans as part of their designs, either through the colourways, in the advertising or in the numbering.”
So, how did Nike take to these up-and-coming brands borrowing their design elements? As Ligaya explained, they weren’t really even aware of it at Nike headquarters:
“Nike doesn't really start picking up on the cultural significance of some of their designs in that field until like the late ’90s, which is when they start going and suing people… So I think it wasn't obvious to them, they were just very focused on innovation and design, you know, designing for athletes… I did a show in 2008 on fashion and sports, where I approached Nike to be part of it, and they said ‘We're not a style brand, we're a lifestyle brand’. So even right into the 2000s, they weren't aware, or maybe they were aware, but they weren't willing to admit that.”
Skate culture is also important later in the story, says Ligaya: “When brands really pick up on understanding what makes sneakerheads tick, which is exclusivity. They go to small skate brands that have dedicated followings, and start collaborating with them on very limited editions.”
From skaters to underground hip-hop and urban POC communities, sneakers have been adopted as unlikely fashion signifiers. Ligaya says:
“The core of subculture is about claiming something that isn't really made for you, whether that's conscious or subconscious. But I think the fact that the big brands didn't cotton on to the core of it [until the 2000s], which is not so much that [these subcultures] adopted them [their shoes], but the fact that they were seeking them out for exclusivity and for rareness.”
“A big game changer was also the internet, to be honest. Being able to exchange across the world also accelerated things. But I do feel like nowadays, because things are so fast, and trends are picked up on so quickly, it's very hard for things to become more than a fad. Whereas back then, they had more time to become a bigger thing and last longer.”
I personally am of the opinion that what people wear, and how they wear it, is more important to document...
So of all the global youth subcultures documented in Sneakers Unboxed, which one is the curator’s favourite? Ligaya told me that she has quite a soft spot for the cholombianos, a small subculture that existed in the Mexican city of Monterrey in the early 2000s, whose aesthetic sits somewhere in the venn diagram between the slicked hairstyles of scene kids and the baggy clothes of hip-hop and skater scenes, all accented with bright colours and pimped-out Converse sneakers (the 2019 Netflix movie I'm No Longer Here gives you an idea).
“They [cholombianos] adopted Converse and customised them, added their own touches, they’d lace their shoes to match their outfits, and they had quite funky hairstyles. It doesn't exist anymore, it was a very short lived moment. So I feel like it's important to be able to show that, and I'm very happy that the photographer who worked to document the culture has lent us the images, because I think it's just such a moment in time that would have been lost otherwise.”
From the cholombiano’s bold shoelace patterns to the original high-tops, a personal highlight for me was seeing two of the oldest pairs of Converse sneakers in existence from the ’20s and ’30s. Their worn and brittle canvas forms carefully contained in a glass case, those connies are a far cry from the tartan pair I coveted in my emo-adjacent youth, or the chunky soles of the fashionable pairs my arty friends sport nowadays. For Ligaya, she’s really into some of the laceless sneakers on display.
Complete with bean bags for lounging back and watching the documentary films included in this deep dive into kicks, Sneakers Unboxed is somewhere you can easily hang out for a few hours – and you’ll leave with some interesting trivia, and a whole new appreciation for the humble sneaker.
The experience doesn’t end there, either. Chef Dayan Hartill-Law at the Gallery’s in-house fine dining restaurant, Palette, dishes up custom degustations inspired by the latest exhibitions. The eight-course menu paired with Sneakers Unboxed includes dishes like ‘My A Di Das’ (featuring raw, rare Australian seafoods with amakaze and aged Koshihikari rice, drizzled with Nikka whiskey) and the ‘All Black Colourway’ (a coal-black assemblage of Nautical Seafood fish with celeriac and fennel, featuring a nod to the iconic Nike stripes). The triple-cooked potato chips that accompany the ‘Dunk Beef’ are a memorable highlight, but the real show-stopper is dessert: the ‘Air Hota Sneaker Box’, a chocolate shoebox that you smash open to reveal flavours of mangoes and cream (but if you’re dairy-free or vegan, you can admire it while clearing your palate with a sorbet).
Sneakers Unboxed is a testament to the cultural cred of HOTA Gallery. The $60.5 million centrepiece of the Gold Coast’s arts and culture precinct, HOTA is a bold example of why the land of meter maids and schoolies packs much more than theme parks and surf beaches.
‘Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street’ opened on November 25, 2023, at HOTA Gallery, Surfers Paradise. The exhibition is open daily from 10am-4pm. Tickets start at $10 and you can snag yours over here. The themed tasting menu at Palate restaurant is $135pp (wine pairing $80-$135pp). Restaurant closed Mon-Tue, high tea only on Sundays. Make a reservation here.