Hoops To Hipsters

Hank Stuever: Half the history of Converse is about basketball, and the rest is about something far more complicated, about the ways a plain sneaker is consistently adored by anticonsumer consumers. A Converse on a teenager now is about remaining authentic and cool, while selling out in every possible way. It is perhaps the neatest trick in footwear history, and who would have thought it, when Marquis Mills Converse first started making simple, rubber-soled work shoes at a factory outside Boston in 1908?