They're Everywhere

When you walk into any given classroom at my high school, you can bet that there will be multiple students sporting pairs of Converse. Every color; every shade, tone, and tint imaginable, even exotic prints and custom layers, everyone trying to stand out in a unique way (oh, the irony!). This trend seemed to suddenly spring up, faster than my little sister can tattle-tale on me. Where did it come from? What turned the key to get it going, and how did it accelerate so fast?

One possibility is Malcom Gladwell’s “law of the few”. This law, condensed, is essentially the 80/20 Principle, meaning that the influence of one person or a handful of people greatly affects the majority of the population. When Converse first came out, with their now classic design in 1921, what started the fire? Celebrity endorsement (what else?). Charles H. "Chuck" Taylor, a basketball player, started wearing these new All-Star shoes. Because of this one man, we see converse like we do. Without Chuck, we might just see them as bizarrely high-cut shoes, with too much shoelace. Teenagers worship celebrities, including athletes, and anything they do or say immediately becomes popular; we see this today, again and again with shoes, purses, and those popular knit headbands that seem to be growing faster than anything I’ve seen in a long time. These Shoes seem to have sprung up in the same way.

Can I just say, ew. If i ever see anyone i know wearing these, i will come to their house, and burn them.

Lol pants AND shoes! All in one! For your convenience!

I designed these ones myself :) too bad they're $62.

They never really went out or style really, but they sure came back with vehemence. These days there are so many different styles of Converse, sometimes it’s difficult to recognize a pair. They have seeped into every area or shoe-ware, from high-heels, to boots, to flats. Why has this one style branched out so far? Another answer is the overall tone of today’s trends. They all seem to resonate with the past, as the decades of the mid 1900s ripple back to the present. Every year a new-old style washes up; ‘vintage’: it’s the new pink. Converse are the embodiment of classic. Teenagers thirst to be accepted, and if that means dressing a certain way, so be it. It’s all controlled the small strain of glamorous kids who everyone aspires to mirror. Therefore, if they wear converse, so does everyone else.

It seems like no other trend has gone as long as Converse without going out of style. These shoes have been preserved because of out human nature to follow the people we admire. Because a few choice individuals decided to wear this style, we all follow obediently.