Vintage sneaker repair and restoration - Sears The Winner retro runners

It’s been awhile since I posted a vintage sneaker repair here on the blog but today we’ve got a good one. This was a restoration project to see if I could revive these old 4 stripe yellow and black 1977 Sears The Winner retro running shoes. These sneakers were in maybe the worst condition of any vintage pair I have ever seen or owned. The soles were worn through the rubber and down to the foam, they had paint on them and were dirty as hell. It took a couple of hours of cleaning before I shipped them to our Instagram buddy and skilled cobbler craftsman @vintage_trainer_repairs68 over in the UK who fixed the worn, warped and brittle soles.

Before I post the photos of how gnarly these sneakers were here’s what they looked like after the midsole and repair. They came out great.

This is what they looked like prior to the repair. They were all jacked up with brittle, bent and warped soles. FUBAR…

The midsole had been worn all the way through the rubber. Damn.

Due to the level of grime on these shoes I went hard at them with detergent using an old toothbrush to clean the nylon and suede. I don’t usually recommend doing this with vintage sneakers but this case needed the next level of cleaning so I threw them in the washer machine. (Don’t try that at home if you care about your old school sneakers. Instead I recommend taking them to Jason Markk for cleaning.)

Here are some photos of the cleaning process. I removed the laces and let them soak in a mixture of water and detergent then I threw them into the washer machine with the sneakers. The washer machine removed a lot of the soot and brought out the color when they sun dried...

Here’s a before and after photo..

If you have any pairs of vintage kicks that you want to get repaired I highly recommend checking in with @vintage_trainer_repairs68 over on Instagram. Tell him The Deffest sent you. 😎

John Lennon Revolution sneakers and the adidas SL72

We've covered a decent amount of bootleg sneakers on this blog but I am wondering if there are any adidas aficionados that knows the story behind these John Lennon 'Revolution' sneakers? They look like re-branded Adidas SL 72's. This "collab" came out around 2010ish (I think) and is a little weird because John Lennon wore a lot of Stan Smith sneakers and I haven't found one photo of him in SL 72s. These were for sale over at Amazon but are sold out. Bummer.

The Sports Shoe: A History from Field to Fashion by Thomas Turner

This post is a quick shout out and plug for friend of the blog and fellow sneaker historian @thomas_a_turner. I recently picked up his book The Sports Shoe: A History from Field to Fashion off of Amazon and it is excellent. The book contains a ton of highly detailed information, some great vintage ads and covers all eras of sport shoes and sneakers throughout the decades. The book starts out in the late 1800’s Victorian era and travels through time as athletic footwear evolved for sports and fashion, including skate sneakers, hip hop and NBA Basketball. I highly recommend checking it out if anyone is interested.

Sneakers from the 1979 movie The Warriors

Last month I posted on legendary rock n roll hall of fame singer Neil Young as a 4 stripe man. Here's another piece of 4 stripe bootleg sneaker history. In the opening credits of the 1979 cult classic movie 'The Warriors' one of the gangs is wearing some 4 stripe sneakers at the 2:56 marker in this video…

These were likely Kmart Trax or Sears The Winner II brand but could also be Bob Wolf brand sneakers.

Going through the rest of the movie most of the sneakers shown are Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. Most of The Orphans are wearing Converse and Puma but one guys in their gang has a pair of bootleg sneakers that look like a hollowed out Puma logo…

These sneakers might be either Kobe brand or Mark 5 brand.

Outside of that there are a bunch of other fast paced scenes that make it difficult to ID the sneakers…

From the still photo shoot images it looks like the Baseball Furies were wearing some yellow and black LD-1000 model runners.

Based on this photo it looks like the costume designer spray painted over the yellow nylon and Nike swoosh logo on the sides of the old yellow and orange LD-1000s.

For more info on The Warriors I’d suggest to pop over to the very awesome website Warriorsmovie.co.uk.

One last disclaimer… all movie stills and video clips displayed above are done so through “fair use” for blogging and journalistic purposes and are copyright of their respective copyright holders.

Nike late 1970s & early 1980s

Putting up a quick post is to see if anyone reading this knows anyone who worked at Nike and was involved in the decision making process in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The more specific range would be around 1977 - 1983ish. I'm trying to track down information on a really rare piece of Nike history and might need an assist. If you do and can share their contact information please drop me a line over on the contact page. Thanks.

Ultra Rare Nike Air Jordan Auction fetches $615,000 at Christie's

From BBC News

“A pair of trainers worn by basketball legend Michael Jordan fetched $615,000 (£460,000) at an online auction on Thursday. The Nike Air Jordan 1 High sneakers, described as the "rarest of the rare", were used by the Chicago Bulls star in an exhibition game in 1985. “

Well done Christie’s.

Four Stripe Legends: Neil Young

I saw a conversation on twitter discussing what model of sneakers Neil Young is wearing on the back cover of the "Rust Never Sleeps" album art. It's hard to tell what brand this is because of the photography and surplus of 4 stripe sneaker brands from around that time. Some of the 4 stripe sneaker brands included Kinney NBA, Sears The Winner, Kmart Trax, Lacrosse, Jet brand, Bob Wolf and many, many more.

Vintage sneaker brand logos, Volume 1 + 1

Vintage sneaker logos + 1, Volume 1. Shout out to thepassionhifi for the free soundcloud beats. We missed a whole lotta brands but were trying to keep this under a minute. Stay tuned for Volume II.

Supreme

We usually stick with sneakers but we’re going off script with this one... check out this awesome little old lady on the news rocking her supreme hat and face mask. 👵 😷 👊 Glad to see streetwear embraced by the elders.

Shout out to Shelly for passing this photo along and asefacevintage for ID’ing the woman in the photo as Lili Hayes!

UPDATE:

Our original post on Instagram got re-grammed a bunch of times which then spurred this awesome artwork by the folks bringing you #Brightmares over @alexpardee. Check it out!

Artwork image credit to AlexPardee.com

New Balance MS327LAA retro runners

A couple of days ago we posted a 1982 ad for NB. Today I wanted to share a post that our buddy @trainer.spotting spotted out in the wild and passed along recently. Thanks man.

New Balance sneaker designer @charlottealee found design inspiration based on some of the NB models in the vintage 355 and SuperComp ads we've posted here on the blog to come up with a whole new hybrid model of New Balance runner called the MS327LAA. Check em out 👇

BEST OF THE WORST SNEAKER BOOTLEGS: DY BRAND 70s 80s FAKE VINTAGE NIKE

OCTOBER 2021 UPDATE: We had a tip come in on Instagram about these sneakers and they said that these are DY brand, not DJ brand so I am updating this blog post title. The 登云 characters on the label translate to deng-yun and apparently Dengyun brand is the number one leather shoe factory in Shanghai.

The last time we did a 'Best of the Bootlegs' post we were looking at the strange case of 'abibas' brand sneakers. Today we've got a great pair of bootleg 1970s or early 80s fake vintage Nike sneakers by a Chinese brand called DJ. These one of a kind old school gems with swoosh and stripe are over at @suitezero.archive who let us know about them over on Instagram.

All image credits above to @suitezero.archive on Instagram.

Jox runs again - vintage sneaker repair and restoration

This post is long overdue... we tried an experiment a few months ago to bring one of these vintage runners back to life with the help of our buddy across the pond @vintage_trainer_repairs68. These old school 40-something year old Jox sneakers seemed like a good candidate because the midsole foam was getting a little crispy and brittle on them. Thanks again to @vintage_trainer_repairs68 who did an awesome job bringing them back. I've included some photos of the process and they came out great. Thom McAn is no longer here, but Jox still lives on...

Before & After: Vintage sneaker restoration by @vintage_trainer_repairs68

Here’s a photo montage of the process below….

Kinney NBA Nike Le Village vintage sneakers

One of the things we dig about running the blog is hearing about the random vintage finds from all corners of the world. We recently heard from @cmmayse in Ohio about some new old stock vintage Kinney NBA Nike Le Village bootlegs that feature the original box, tissue paper and the upside down swoosh logo. The last I heard these sneakers had been sold but you can check them out below.

Sotheby's & Stadium Goods auction 100 of the World's Rarest Sneakers

UPDATE 7/23/2019: These vintage Nike waffle sneakers sold for $437,500 today.

If anyone has $80,000 - $160,000 laying around Stadium Goods just posted the 100 'Worlds Most Rarest' sneakers up for auction at Sotheby's. Part of this auction is the 1972 Olympic trials handmade Nike waffle racing flat moon shoes.

Stripe game strong 💪

We posted some 4 stripe Bob Wolf Super Pro sneakers the other day and were trying to figure out how many stripes are too many stripes so we did an art project to find out. This post is for some friends over at the ‘gram. It turns out that you can only fit 9 stripes on the side of a sneaker with adidas spacing.

Adidas let us know when you’re ready to bring out the Deffest 'Super stripe sport ultra max pro 9 stripe' edition, we’re ready to answer the 📞

The factory error upside down swoosh Air Jordans

I was searching around on the upside down swoosh AAU sneakers the other day and came across a Sneakers by Vice video on Andrea Canziani’s Nike factory error upside down swoosh Air Jordans. Those sneakers are now valued at around $143,000 which is nearly enough to buy a Maserati GranTurismo. 🤑

April Fools

APRIL FOOLS. (We got’cha)

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to check out Jordanified.com. 🔥👟👀 For those that missed it yesterday the April fools day prank concept was simple.... to turn every pair of available of Nike sneakers into "Jordans" for the 35th anniversary of Michael Jordan’s signing. The site is meant to be a satire on the never ending Jordan / Kobe / LeBron G.O.A.T. debate and we had a lot of fun making it.

To make it work we painstakingly re-colored every shoe in the Air Jordan 1 retro colorways using the NIKEiD tool, including LeBron, Kobe, Kyrie, Paul George and Kevin Durant's shoes, numbering them all 23 and renaming them as "Air." If you want to see our handy work the link above will take you there and as a side note if any of you want to buy the Jordanified "AIR" sneakers they are for sale at Nike's website. Shout out to Nike for the NikeID tool - this is a really awesome resource. No sneakers were harmed during the making of this prank and there can only be one G.O.A.T. 🐐

UPDATE: Jordanified.com no longer exists but you can still see the collection here on Pinterest.

Sears the Winner retro sneakers by Warehouse Company (Japan)

A couple of weeks ago I posted the Adidas and Converse side by side of the Sears the Winner kicks and mentioned the original sneakers from the early 70s sell for between $1500 - $2800 now. It turns out that a company in Japan called "Warehouse Company" is still putting the 4 strips Converse version of these out and they sell for about $100. This images are from a Rakuten store called "CLEVER WEB SHOP" but unfortunately their inventory is currently sold out. Shout out to @secondhand_nate for this passing along the info on Warehouse Company.

The ultimate St. Patrick's Day sneakers - Saucony Shamrock Jazz Low Pro

Top of the mornin' to y'all! I saw that Saucony just brought back one of our favorites - The Jazz Low Pro Shamrock runner. If you order these within 9 hours they'll arrive in time for St. Patrick’s day festivities. Well done Saucony. 👟☘️💚

Sears the Winner 1974 vintage shoes by Converse AND Adidas

Another sneaker mystery... one of the readers of the blog emailed this over (thanks to Susan S for the photo) so I wanted to post it. The left image is from the 1974 Sears Fall catalog for Simpsons-Sears in Canada. What's odd is that these Sears the Winner shoes there were made by Adidas while the identical shoe model from the same year in the right side of the image was made by Converse for the US market. What’s odd is that the Adidas Canadian version have 3 stripes and the Converse have 4. Either way, I've seen these sneakers for sale online for between $1500 - $2800 so if anyone spots a pair at your local thrift shop you should probably scoop them up.

Here’s another catalog image from Sears in 1976 where the adidas Winner line is featured.