Look around at people in the mall, a ball game, on the street, or in school. The majority of shoes on the feet of young and old are some sort of running shoe. That wasn’t always the case. “Prior to 1972, nobody was wearing running shoes casually,” says Nike DNA historian Rick Lower.
The shoe that changed the world was the Nike Cortez, a revolutionary design that incorporated a full-length cushioned midsole, a heel-toe drop that mimicked the “normal” dress shoes of the day, and a padded, comfortable upper. Nike cofounder and legendary coach Bill Bowerman designed the shoe to accommodate the growing number of road runners who needed more protection than offered by the leather- or hard-rubber-soled running shoes then available.
For much of the 1970s, the Cortez ruled this space in the running world. “It wasn’t until 1975 to 1977 that other companies like Brooks and New Balance began to compete,” says Lower, and by then the Cortez had defined Nike as “the cushioning company.”
But the shoe had an impact on more than the running world. “The original Cortez was quickly updated in the 1970s, and became adopted by different cultures,” Lower says. Not just a shoe for the track team, the Cortez broke out onto the street and became the first mainstream running shoe.
On September 24, Nike will celebrate this part of its history by re-releasing the Cortez. You may recall that Nike already did that earlier this year, but that model, the “Forest Gump” version, wasn’t an exact replica of the original ’72 Cortez. “I borrowed the style [from the Nike archives] and had it 3-D scanned, this way I would get an exact copy of the original I could work from,” says Daryl Matthews, the shoe's designer. Some of the back-to-the-original features you’ll notice on this version are the leather pull tab sticking out the back of the heel, the zig-zag seam down the center of the toe, and the rubber toe cap.
At the same time, Nike will bring out the Cortez Classic Textil Pack, a family of shoes inspired by the Cortez models of the mid-70s with nylon uppers and a dual-density midsole. Rather than making exact replicas, these will be spiced up with stylish luxury elements such as corduroy around the heel and on the tongue tab and a quilted leather sock liner.
Unlike the original, neither shoe is designed to be run in—performance running shoes have advanced exponentially in the past half-century. But runners can appreciate the history of these shoes while wearing them for everyday use—and keeping their running shoes for their miles on the road, trail, and track.
