20 Years Of Nike Basketball: A Look Back At The Air Flight Huarache

Nike continues its countdown of the 20 sneakers which changed the shoe world with the Air Flight Huarache. Originally launched in 1992 the sneaker was design with no Swoosh and as a shift to what had been a stream of super high basketball silhouettes. With the assistance of Eric Avar, Tinker Hatfield created the Huarache well aware of what was going in culturally with the game of basketball implementing a variety of features which led to the sneaker becoming a timeless classic. Included are a few words from Nike and Tinker in addition to some original design photos of the shoe dating as far back as 1991.

“If the shoe fits in with other things that are going on culturally, you get a perfect storm.” - Tinker Hatfield

The Nike Air Flight Huarache’s aesthetic swagger was in what it stripped away. A swoosh? No need for one — it’s not like this shoe could have been made by any other brand. That Dynamic Fit, exoskeleton, leather and neoprene combined to make this one of the purest expressions of performance to date.

While a maverick team — led by intuitionist Tinker Hatfield, and assisted by Eric Avar — worked behind the scenes to translate the Huarache running technology to the courts, it took a crew of collegiate game-changers to give the Nike Air Flight Huarache an extra ascent in terms of publicity.

If the sport’s style leaders were dressing from the feet up, the Huarache was an instruction to those shorts to relax a little, because this shoe had it under control.

As the seam length of the shorts lengthened, the Huarache countered with a reductionist school of thought — “Where can we just trim this baby back a little bit?” Tinker asked, because that minimal upper needed to be complemented by an equally stripped-down sole. That leads to the eternal question: which came first – this rebel shoe like no other, eclipsing a previous decade of bulk, or basketball’s completely new attitude and aesthetic?

This shoe would have caused a storm either way, urging those from as far away as the nose bleeds to ask, “What was that?”