The history of the Huarache

In 1991, Nike debuted a shoe that resembled nothing else on the shelf.

"It was such a different design, it didn't even need a Swoosh", said Tinker Hatfield, who drove the project. He recalled some people saying, "You can't design a shoe at Nike without a big Swoosh on the side".

"My point of view was this shoe was so unique that only Nike would have had the guts to do something like this, so therefore it didn't need a Swoosh", Hatfield said.

Making a move to hoops a year or so later was initially met with scepticism. By modifying the shoe's back strap to accommodate basketball movements, firming up the outsole and lateral side of the shoe and extending the exoskeleton design up around the ankle, the Huarache became a more minimalist approach to basketball footwear.

Initial scepticism was squashed when the Air Flight Huarache was embraced by one of the country's most interesting university basketball teams at the time, the University of Michigan, who played in the shoe during the 1992 NCAA tournament.

The Air Huarache has become a mainstay, with releases hitting many other categories, including training, tennis, aerobics, lacrosse, American football and baseball. The minimal design also went on to inspire other lightweight and flexible footwear designs of the future, like the Kukini, Presto and Nike Free concepts.