I teach writing at a community college in upstate New York, and in recent years, I’ve noticed a surprising trend in women’s footwear. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to women’s footwear, but now, some female students are wearing the same footwear that I used to wear when I was a high-school athlete in Amsterdam, New York, in the mid 1960’s: Converse All Star sneakers.
“Cons,” we used to call them, were the white canvas, high-top sneakers with the blue star in the ankle patch and the name “Chuck Taylor” around the star. Taylor was the primary salesperson for Converse early on. A member of the basketball team that Converse sponsored in the 1920’s, he made suggestions for the comfort of the shoe that helped make it one of the best-selling basketball shoes of all time.