Converse Chuck Taylor All Star High 'Stars & Stripes'
Colorway: White/Midnight Navy/University Red · Style code: 170813F · Release date: April 28, 2021 · Price: $93 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Converse Chuck Taylor All Star x Dragon Ball Z "Goku" (A21842C) · Converse Chuck Taylor All Star x Dragon Ball Z "Vegeta" (A21843C) · Converse Chuck Taylor All Star x Dragon Ball Z "Frieza" (A21844C) · Converse Chuck Taylor All Star x Dragon Ball Z "Cell" (A21845C) · PS Converse Chuck Taylor All Star x Dragon Ball Z "Fusion" (A21846C)
The shoe predates the man whose name it carries. Converse, founded in Malden, Massachusetts in 1908, put out a basketball model called the Non-Skid in 1917 and reworked it in 1922. Chuck Taylor was a semi-professional player who joined the company as a salesman in 1921 and started pushing for changes to it: more flexibility, better support around the ankle. Within a year Converse had adopted his suggestions, and it put his signature on the circular ankle patch as an endorsement. That patch is generally counted as the first time an athlete's name was attached to a piece of athletic footwear.
By 1923 the shoe had settled into the form still sold today: a canvas high-top with a rubber toe cap and a five-pointed star on the patch. Very little about it has changed since, through bankruptcy in the 1990s and Nike's purchase of the company in 2003.
That unchanged canvas is exactly why it takes graphics well, and this version uses it as a flat surface: stars and stripes printed edge to edge in red, over the same high-cut silhouette. It released in April 2021 at $60.