Footprints: A Walk Through Five Decades of Style and Subculture

Beginning in France in the early 1970s when designer Jacques Chevallereau created the first 'jean boot’, influenced by the newly-vocal youth movement of the previous decade - Kickers has been a youth brand, synonymous with identity, central to the uniform code of one youth movement after another.

Student riots in Paris had demanded a fairer, more democratic society and the cultural climate, including the bold play Hair, expressed a desire for a never-before-seen personal freedom. Since its inception, the iconic Kick Hi shoe has been part of the culture and image of many youth movements - really gaining popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the Manchester music scene.

The celebrated the brand which is recognised as a part of history - for its 40th anniversary, Jocks&Nerds and Kickers came to together to create a series of five films, which underpin the significance of the Kick Hi shoe, interviewing key protagonists from some of these movements.

We see Johnathan Joseph aka DJ Spoony talking us through the origins of the UK Garage scene, noting how “the real super notchers - the top dons” would have “loads of the little Kicker tags” visible, photographer Ian Tilton discussing the ‘Madchester' scene, photographer Gavin Watson discussing the rave scene of the mid-1980s, and Kevin Sampson noting how the boys wore blue and the girls wore red Kickers during the distinctive dress code which is regarded as the “casuals”.