Stan Smith: You might know the shoes, but do you know the man behind them?
NEW YORK — Stan Smith first played at Wimbledon in 1965 and won the tournament seven years later, giving him lifetime privileges to the All England Lawn Tennis Club. But it was only this year that Stan Smith was allowed to sit in the royal box at Centre Court while wearing his original green and white Stan Smiths.
“That was a big deal,” he told Yahoo Sports on Thursday.
Unless he’s playing tennis or attends an event that requires dress shoes, the 78-year old Smith is almost certainly going to be found wearing a pair of the Adidas shoes that bear his name and remain one of the most popular and recognizable sneakers in the world.
But the more time that passes since Smith’s tennis career, which brought him a U.S. Open title and the No. 1 ranking in 1971, the number of people who know anything about the shoe’s namesake or the story behind its enduring impact gets smaller.
“Unless you’re 60 or older, maybe 50 or older, you wouldn’t have seen me play,” Smith said. “So unless you’re a tennis historian, why would you know?”
That generation gap is, in part, why the new documentary “Who is Stan Smith?” from LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s Uninterrupted media company will be an interesting watch in its recent Hulu and ESPN+ release for millions of people who have worn the shoes but never thought much about the man whose face and name adorns the tongue.
Smith has always had good humor about that aspect of his fame. He even authored a book in 2018 titled “Some People Think I’m a Shoe.”
But the story of how his shoe became such a phenomenon is fascinating.
Adidas introduced the first leather tennis shoe in 1963, putting the signature of French tennis star Robert Haillet on the side near its signature perforations, but his retirement in 1971 left the company looking for a new star to endorse. Particularly an American star.
So during the 1972 French Open, the head of adidas Horst Dassler met with Smith and his agent Donald Dell to convince him to wear the shoe, which he did a few weeks later at Wimbledon.
After Smith won the title, Dell had leverage. And he didn’t merely want adidas to put Smith’s signature on the shoe but also a silhouette of his face, which the company initially resisted.
“He was determined,” Smith said. “And obviously I was supportive of the idea if I was going to get involved with the shoe. The name was already on it along with Haillet, but to differentiate that, to put the photograph and my signature on the tongue, was a bit of a coup. You have to give Donald credit for convincing them that that was the right move.”
Smith’s time at the top of the sport didn’t endure as long as he hoped, almost entirely due to elbow problems.
But everything changed in the 1980s, shortly after he retired. In England, the change in style trends toward more casual dress and sportswear often incorporated the Stan Smiths, which had that perfect balance between casual and elegant. And in America, the Run DMC hit “My Adidas” and their 1987 tour with the Beastie Boys — who all wore the Stan Smiths — turned the shoe into a cross-culture status symbol.
“It’s effortless, timeless,” musician Pharrell Williams says in the documentary. “I think every community embraced that shoe — hustlers, drug dealers. If were going to be real, we’re going to be real.”
Adoring the feet of everyone from David Bowie to Barack Obama, the shoe has had several generations of popularity. It certainly took Smith by surprise.
“You have the hood supporting the shoe, the preppies supporting the shoe, and my favorite thing is to see a daughter and mother wearing the same shoe, which normally daughters wouldn’t be caught dead in what their mothers are wearing,” he said. “So the whole expanse of interest around the world and with different cultures of people, the shoe has a good price point.
“I remember we stopped in Kenya on the way to South Africa one time and the guy that came to clean the airplane was wearing a pair of my shoes with no shoelaces and they looked like they were about 10 years old. So for some people it was a very, very special thing to aspire to wear these shoes. It had a huge cultural impact, which I was very surprised about.”
Though the film addresses all those elements, it details the entire story of Smith’s life including his close friendship with Arthur Ashe, helping the author Mark Mathabane escape apartheid in South Africa and come to the U.S. on a tennis scholarship and choosing to boycott Wimbledon in 1973 rather than defend his title.
Smith and other players skipped the tournament in protest of Yugoslavian player Niki Pilić being suspended by the International Tennis Federation for playing in a World Championship Tennis event rather than the Davis Cup.
“We felt it was just not fair," Smith said. "I was one of the founders of the ATP and one of the leaders. On the other hand, I was playing the best tennis of my life and had won seven out of 11 tournaments in the spring of ’73.
“But it was the beginning of our ATP, the beginning of players’ rights. The federations controlled the four majors, and the players were like puppets in the show. Our goal was that players should be able to play when and where they want at any time of the year and not controlled by the federations. We realized if we stuck together, the players have the leverage."
But as interesting as Smith’s journey in tennis has been, it’s the shoes that make him larger than life.Though nobody plays tennis in them anymore, including Smith himself, their simple but iconic retro style will ensure his name remains on people’s feet for many generations to come.
* This article was originally published here
