LA still rocks the Nike Cortez after 50 years
It's been 50 years since Nike released the Cortez for the Munich Olympics, but since it hit LA in the 1980s, it's become the city's shoe.
Photo credit: Nike
Shoes, sports, and culture have a lot of crossover. Jordans have become synonymous with basketball, and players often customize their cleats in football, soccer, and baseball. Shoe culture has become a way to express yourself in sports and everyday attire.
Max Muncy showed his #Dodgers City Connect jersey and custom Nike Cortez cleats at the end. pic.twitter.com/Qe3O7D7uQQ
— Matthew Moreno (@MMoreno1015) August 20, 2021
And there is one shoe that represents Latino culture to a tee: the Nike Cortez. You see them on people’s feet. You see them on shop displays. They’re even still hanging on the powerlines after all these years. The Nike Cortez is known globally, but its home will always be in Los Angeles.
But how did the Cortez become a representation of our culture 50 years after its inception?
The Cortez was Nike’s big debut
The Cortez was never intended to become a fashion statement, but instead a high-performance running shoe.
Nike originally wanted to call their first mainstream running shoe the Aztec in honor of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. However, Adidas threatened a lawsuit because they had already produced a shoe named the Azteca. So Nike countered by calling the shoe the Cortez due to Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador responsible for the fall of the Aztec Empire. How ironic that the Cortez has become a staple in the Latino community.
The pair of shoes first hit the main stage at the 1972 Olympics, when Olympic athletes representing the United States first wore them at the games. The audience caught on, and the craze for the Nike Cortez began.
The Nike Cortez revived some mainstream cred appearing in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump, becoming a fashion icon and selling out around the country. A lot of people credit the movie for re-introducing the shoe to the world. But the Cortez didn’t need a movie to become popular in LA–we were on those way before Tom Hanks.
From Eazy-E to Kendrick Lamar
Black and Latino kids in Los Angeles started wearing the Cortez in the 1980s for a few reasons: They were comfortable, cheap, and had a swoosh. And when LA gang culture hit the mainstream around the same time, so did the Cortez.
What more prominent icons of LA culture are there than Eazy-E and Kendrick Lamar? Cultural icons that transcended into the mainstream wore the Nike Cortez. They became the de-facto shoe of hustlers and drug dealers, and the shoes were also dubbed “Dopeman Nikes” in N.W.A’s song “Dope Man.”
And though the Cortez has lost some of its popularity, you can still see them all around town today. As a kid going to swap meets with my mom, I’d see Nike Cortez pairs everywhere because it was the most affordable shoe for Latinos. Many immigrant families couldn’t afford Jordans or other high-end shoes, but the Cortez still provided the fashion cred without the price tag. It was the most accessible shoe in L.A, and it’s still popular with kids today.
Still fresh
The shoe has evolved with styles and trends, but it has remained relevant through many controversies. Gangs in Los Angeles began wearing different versions to align with their affiliations. Many LA schools in the 80s and 90s treated the shoe like clothes with Raiders or Kings logos and banned them entirely from campus.
The Cortez isn’t viewed the same way by the newer generations, but it’s still culturally relevant. LA designer Mister Cartoon helped design a version of the Cortez in 2015 that featured the face of an Aztec warrior in place of the swoosh to honor his and his community’s heritage.
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East LA artist Alexis Quintero has worked with high fashion label Commes de Garçon’s release of its own version of the Cortez. It’s never left the street, but the Cortez has transcended its status first as a running shoe and next as a gang icon.
What was just an innocent running shoe became a cultural icon for a city and community. Now, the Nike Cortez has over 700 different versions and many collaborations with celebrities. Who knew what one community could do with one pair of shoes?
