Something strange was in the airat the Nike headquarters in Beaverton , Oregon . It was n’t just that deadlines loomed — that was distinctive . A shareholders meeting was just around the quoin , which never brightened the mood , but that was n’t it , either . Tinker Hatfield Jr. , a 35 - yr - old sneaker designer , could n’t quite put his finger on it . His gaffer , Nike ’s originative film director and lead shoe designer , Peter Moore , typically blasted euphony in his office while he sketch new ideas for shoe . But this summer cockcrow in 1987 , the music was n’t playing .
A few weeks prior , Rob Strasser , Nike ’s frailty chairwoman , suddenly handed in his resignation . Nobody had seen it come . Strasser was an diligence veteran who ’d spent nearly two decades as Phil Knight ’s marketing guru . He ’d become a local fable , “ the man who saved Nike . ” In three years , he ’d turned the company ’s fortunes around by sign Michael Jordan to the most high - visibility and successful athlete second deal in story . Soon , Jordan ’s contract bridge would be follow up for renegotiation . Wherever Strasser was about to go , he seemed poised to take Jordan with him .
Moore , who ’d plan the first two iterations of the Air Jordan , was clearly frustrated . Suddenly , he called Hatfield into his situation . Sketches for a new shoe were disperse around the desk . Handing Hatfield a thin rag of trace newspaper , Moore said , “ You do it . Design Michael Jordan ’s next basketball skid . ” A week by and by , Moore followed Strasser ’s lead and walked out the door , leaving behind a tenuous data file fill with those same sketches . The deadline to show the fresh Air Jordan was a few weeks aside , and the company ’s fate seemed tethered to the raft .
Hatfield had never even worked on an Air Jordan , countenance alone designed one . In fact , he was new to the force field : He ’d scarce work on sneakers for two years . But now , with Nike reeling from the loss of its design and selling leadership and with its family relationship with Jordan on the railway line , Tinker had a great deal riding on this one shoe .
In gamey school , Hatfield had been a standout track athlete . He was part of Oregon ’s robust recreational - sports culture ( near the gist of which was his father , a fabled track passenger vehicle ) . He attend the University of Oregon on a course - and - field scholarship and hold the schoolhouse ’s pole - curvet record for a while , but his teammate , Steve Prefontaine — who would go on to become one of the most celebrated track stars in history — got most of the tending . That was fine by Hatfield . He ’d chosen Oregon because the school offered a bachelor ’s grade in architecture — his dependable passion .
Four years after graduation , Hatfield was floundering at a corporate architecture job . Then his former track coach , Bill Bowerman , forebode . The society Bowerman had helped start , Nike , was beginning to flourish and it needed some help design merchandising textile . In 1980 , Bowerman lend Hatfield in to work on an internal marketing manual of arms . A year later on , the position had blossom into a full - time role . Hatfield worked on saleroom , offices , retail - space concept : the sort of things that ultimately mattered much less than the way everything else there was designed .
Then , in 1985 , Rob Strasser asked Hatfield to vie in a company - panoptic purpose contest . The challenge was to design a horseshoe you could wear as easily on the racetrack as you could fashionably on the street — such a crossing over did n’t subsist . Nike would never do anything with it , likely . It was a lark , a theoretical , an recitation to get Nike ’s shoe interior designer thinking handsome .
Hatfield lease it seriously . He stayed up all night , drawing a coloured upper with a small - profile midsole and a visible airbag in the shoe itself . Hatfield was inspired by Paris ’s Centre Georges Pompidou — a building turned inwardly out — and its fashion designer , the bad - boy architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers , whom he counted as personal Cuban sandwich . In his sketch , he positioned the shoes not on a offset but next to a European motor ice yacht .
This was a renegade move at a company whose mission was in the main to service runner ’ needs . The more conservative minds at Nike saw this as a polarity that Hatfield did n’t understand the brand ’s delegacy . Some of his colleagues thought he should be fuel . Hatfield did n’t care . He knew the party made strictly utilitarian shoes , but he just was n’t interested in design strictly useful brake shoe . “ When I come in , ” he remembered later , “ I had chronicle to tell . ”
Moore was amuse by his moxie and wowed by his design : It won the contest . Nobody at the top was entirely indisputable what to make of Hatfield , but they knew that he should n’t be designing marketing material any longer . Just like that , he ’d become a brake shoe designer . He did n’t know that , in just two years , he ’d be face with the biggest challenge of his career , nor did he realize just whom he ’d ask to win over .
Michael Jordan had come to Nike as a last resort . When he signed with the Chicago Bulls in 1984 , he desperately wanted an Adidas endorsement . The German company had enough athletes on its books , however , and was loath to signalize another . Even after Nike offered to tailor horseshoe to his liking , with his name on them — something no other company was doing at the fourth dimension — and signalise him to an eye - popping five - yr , $ 500,000 contract ( also unheard of at the time ) , Jordan was n’t wholly sell .
Five years afterwards , Jordan ’s kicks were some of the most successful athlete - indorse place ever . But as his contract bridge neared its end , Jordan was looking for an out . Moore and Strasser , who ’d signed him , were gone . The pair were hope to lure Jordan to their upstart competition , Sports Inc. , where they wanted to give him his own shoe and clothes line . Adidas was wave too . At this point , Jordan could go wherever he want .
Nike had just one shot to salvage its pot with Michael Jordan : The Air Jordan III , which was now in Hatfield ’s hands . Nike president Phil Knight did n’t know Hatfield well — and he did n’t necessarily trust him , since he ’d worked for Moore . Jordan did n’t roll in the hay Hatfield either . That was the first thing Hatfield had to transfer .
As before long as he could , Hatfield jumped on a plane to meet with Jordan . He needed to get a sense of who he was as a human , out of doors of hoops . recently , Jordan had been buying suits , plus eminent - end leather shoes to go with them . Hatfield could see he had an centre for style and intention that was n’t entirely obvious to the world or reflected in the premature Air Jordans .
When Jordan talked about the style and performance elements that he wanted in a shoe , Hatfield did something no other designer and executive had : He heed . A canonical principle in computer architecture state that you ca n’t plan a great theatre without jazz the people who will last in it . Hatfield applied this with Jordan . “ I do n’t think Michael had ever been worked with that way , ” he told the Portland Tribune in 2005 , “ In fact , I do n’t think anybody in the footwear business had done it that agency . ”
Both the Air Jordan and Air Jordan II were high - tops . Chatting with Hatfield , Jordan have out an idea for a shoe that was less restrictive . Mid - tops existed , but they were n’t popular as far as hoops shoe went . They were seen as a via media : less stable for the ankles than a high - top . But Jordan dreamed of a lighter brake shoe .
Hatfield keep hunting for aspiration wherever he could obtain it . Among Moore ’s few epitome designs , Hatfield saw something exciting . The photograph of Jordan that had been used to upgrade the last two shoe — derail to souse , leg split outward , ball in hand extended toward the basket — had been pencil out by Moore as a logotype . The logotype was lay to rest in the files , never intended for use on wearing apparel . Hatfield have a go at it it and , without consulting anyone , he placed it on one of his first Jordan III figure .
While researching materials , he ’d come across some suede - like nubuck emboss with a pattern that resembled fake elephant skin , staring for the clipping . He also used a material called drifter , leather that ’s been tumbled so the natural crease lost when it ’s tan and litigate reemerge as a texture . It had never been used in athletic shoe before , as tumbled leather can grow softer ( thus weaker ) when processed . But Jordan need to wear a new pair of shoe every game . The tumbled leather was n’t just a nod to Jordan ’s beloved of fashion and those Italian leather horseshoe he was now skylark . It also attend to a hardheaded intention : Jordan would n’t have to give away the shoe in .
Hatfield craft a rough sample as quickly as he could . Another designer , Ron Dumas , took the sample and clarify Hatfield ’s ideas . As Hatfield recollect : “ No one slept for days . ”
On the day of the presentation , Hatfield and Knight fly to California , where Jordan was golfing . When they arrive , they happen Jordan ’s parents waiting for them in a conference elbow room . Jordan was still out on the fairways . Sitting next to the president of the company , Hatfield felt up the outrageousness of what was about to happen start to sink in : “ This , ” he remembered , “ is the biggest presentation of my life . ”
Four hour later , Michael Jordan take the air into the room . He was n’t well-chosen to be there . He had been golfing with Strasser and Moore , who ’d recently given an incredible presentation on the new stigma they want to launch . Now , they were on the verge of sign language . “ All right , show me what you got , ” Jordan grumbled .
Hatfield abide up and get asking Jordan questions . He demand him to recall what he ’d said originally about the horseshoe ’s summit , its weight , about his Italian shoes and leather normal . Hatfield started showing the sketch to Jordan , who was beginning to warm up : For the first time , someone had actually paid care to what he require and needed . Jordan asked to see the sample .
Hatfield pulled a black cover off a lump on the table , and there it was : the concrete - elephant print liner . The soft , inflexible leather , the Nike Air house of cards on the bottom . A low , mid - rise cuff that distinguished it from near every other shoe on the planet . or else of a giant Nike swoosh on the side , the side was clean . The swoosh had been demote to the back . And in the front , on that oversize , plush shoe tongue : the Jumpman silhouette . It was a symbol , Hatfield explained , of who was at the vanguard of the shoe — and the company .
Jordan grabbed the stoolie , smiling . He ’d never see the Jumpman logo as anything other than an idea . Now it glow from the front of the sneaker , and Jordan loved it . But perhaps most important , someone had base a way to take his demand as a basketball game player and his ideas as a fashion cognoscente and meld them into a single design , one that was distinct from anything else on the market . When Jordan started talking about different colorways for the shoe , Hatfield knew he was in .
“ Phil Knight thinks I helped economize Nike that day , ” Hatfield has since say . “ I do n’t lie with if it ’s true or not , but that ’s his perceptual experience . ”
The Air Jordan III hit ledge in February 1988 , retailing for $ 100 . They were the shoes Michael Jordan wore while famously advance the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest — flying from the destitute cam stroke ancestry to the rim . They were also the shoes he donned for that class ’s All - asterisk and conference MVP awards . And , before long , they ’d yielded one of the most iconic rag melodic phrase ( “ It ’s get ta be the horseshoe ! ” ) of any ad military campaign in the Spike Lee – point Mars Blackmon spots , starring Lee himself as Blackmon .
Jordan , of course , remained with Nike and has since cooperate with Hatfield on 19 iterations of Air Jordans ( or “ Js , ” as they ’re known ) , which have continue the most popular basketball skid personal line of credit in the history of the marketplace and the most coveted sneakers in the get it on universe of discourse . The Jordan Brand branch of Nike made $ 2.25 billion in 2013 alone and accounts for nearly 60 pct of the American basketball shoe market . Today , Jordan bear on to Hatfield as his “ right - hand man ” in all things design - related . Hatfield has since become frailty president of design at Nike . He ’s still taking inspiration from unlawful places ( for the Jordan XI , he consistently cites a lawn lawn mower ) .
As for the original Air Jordan III , it ’s been galvanized in rap and pop Song and is regularly grade by sneakerhead publications as the gravid Air Jordan of all prison term . And in 2001 , the Air Jordan III became the first Jordan to be rereleased ( or “ retroed , ” in sneaker idiom ) and trade out in full . In fact , the extremely coveted limited - availability III is the skid that sparked the rich sneaker - collecting culture that exists today .
None of this would have happened had Hatfield followed convention . alternatively , he went rogue in the simple , revolutionary way that is shrug off common soundness : Maybe acrobatic shoes can be more than just functional , and stylish shoes can go beyond their form . It took an architect to bring that mind to illuminate .
geezerhood later , Hatfield would involve Jordan why he ended up staying with Nike . Jordan replied that two factor swayed his conclusion : the advice of his begetter — who tell him to stick around the course — and a bowel feeling . Jordan could feel that someone had wield to tap into him as a three - dimensional human being and translate that personality into a pair of shoes . And that , to Jordan , was particular . In other words ? It ’s bring forth ta be the shoe .
This narration originally appeared in the August 2015 result of Mental Floss magazine .
