Chloé Zhao from Beijing was the first Asian (and second woman) to win an Oscar in the Best Director category for Nomadland. When her name was mentioned at this year's gala she walked up in a knit dress from French fashion house Hermès. The shoes? Some white sneakers.
And although she was not the first to combine tennis shoes and a gala dress in a celebration of this type (actresses Tina Fey and Millie Bobby Brown had already done so, both wearing the same white converse), she did show that after the restrictions of the pandemic sneakers have become an even stronger trend for any occasion, however elegant it may be.
A little history
Ángela Useche, fashion consultant and expert on footwear and leather goods, says that in the 1980s it was not very well seen to wear tennis shoes with more elegant suits, “then the people from the show broke the schemes by appearing at events with tennis shoes or shoes. sporty, they traditionally arrived in converse”.
But despite this daring, there are two influences that years later began to generate a change. The first was the athletes who incorporated sports shoes into their day-to-day attire, Michael Jordan, for example. The second is specified by Ana María Riveros, product manager at Skechers, when she recounted how executive women in New York would walk to the office in tennis shoes and then change into heels.
Useche adds that, bored with carrying two pairs of shoes, they began to leave their tennis shoes on and introduce sports shoes in moments of formality such as going to work.
Although tennis shoes began to be seen in a different way, it was only in 2014 that the schemes were completely broken: the Chanel fashion house with Karl Lagerfeld at the head introduced tennis shoes in its gala parade: “That breaks all the schemes and there the world of fashion turns its eyes to sports shoes, to that aesthetic of seeing sophisticated and luxurious women, but with tennis shoes”, says Useche.
