By the mid-60’s, 90% of basketball players, from Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West to Bailey Howell and Bob Pettit, wore the All-Stars to all their games. He was a loveable guy and fun to be around and a nice guy, and he, at one point, knew every college basketball coach in the country. And if you wanted to hire a coach, you went through him. He’d recommend somebody." In 1917, while Taylor was still in high school, Converse began manufacturing one of the first basketball shoes. At least one source indicates that in 1918 Taylor wore Converse Non-Skids, the canvas and rubber shoe that was the forerunner to the Converse All Stars. [9] [10] Converse salesman [ edit ] With one notable exception, Taylor's career as a player on a semi-professional team ended in the 1920s in Chicago when he became a traveling salesman and product promoter for the Converse Rubber Shoe Company. However, during the 1926–27 season, Taylor was a player-manager of the All-Stars, the Chicago-based touring team that the Converse company sponsored to promote sales of its Converse All Star basketball shoes. [8]

He’s an American character in the sense that we talk about people reinventing themselves. You can’t say what he did. He didn’t win a Nobel Prize. He’s not a great mathematician. He’s not Johann Sebastian Bach. But his brilliance was in being an American and just an entrepreneur, and it’s great.” DeMello, Margo (2009). Feet and Footwear: A Cultural Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: Macmillan. pp.80–82. ISBN 9780313357152. That kind of success seemed impossible in 1969 when Converse pulled Taylor out of retirement to visit his friend and fellow Indiana native John Wooden.After graduation, instead of heading off to college, Taylor launched his semi-pro career playing basketball with the Columbus Commercials. He’d go on to play for a handful of other teams across the Midwest, including the the Akron Firestone Non-Skids in Ohio, before finally moving to Chicago in 1922 to work as a sales representative for the Converse Rubber Shoe Co. (The company's name was eventually shortened to Converse, Inc.) a b c "Converse timeline" (PDF). Converse.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-14 . Retrieved 2012-03-13. He loved the game [of basketball]. He loved being a part of it. He put on clinics all over the country, helping kids learn how to play a little bit better," said Dean, who later served as the athletic director at Louisiana State University and is in the College Basketball Hall of Fame.

Charles Hollis Taylor was born on July 24, 1901, and raised in southern Indiana. Basketball—the brand-new sport invented by James Naismith in 1891—was beginning to take the Hoosier State by storm. Taylor joined his high school team, the Columbus High School Bull Dogs, and was named captain. I feel like they give me something to keep me going forward,” he says. “Its history and representation of the independents and the outspoken really make it my choice of sneaker.” a b "Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame Members" (PDF). National Sporting Goods Association . Retrieved August 8, 2018.Taylor never asked for a royalty for having his name on the shoe. Air Jordans have earned Michael Jordan far more money than he ever made as a player, but Converse gave Taylor a full expense account and commission. By the time he retired in the mid-1960s, Taylor had been out on the road selling for more than 40 years. He married and divorced then married again later in life, but had no children. Dean says Taylor had no regrets. As a Converse employee, Taylor helped redesign the shoes and also became an advocate for basketball in America. He was a player and coach for the Converse All-Stars, the company’s industrial league basketball team, and created something called the Converse Basketball Yearbook, in which the sport’s best players, trainers, teams and greatest moments were commemorated. He also conducted basketball clinics all over the country. In addition to selling Converse All Star shoes and conducting basketball clinics, Taylor contributed to the development of the sport in other ways. In 1935 he invented a "stitchless" basketball that was easier to control. [4] Taylor also promoted basketball internationally. When basketball became an Olympic sport in 1936, he designed a white high-top model with blue and red trim for the 1936 Olympic Games. [ citation needed] The Converse All Star shoe remained the official shoe of the Olympics team from 1936 to 1968. [1] World War II military service [ edit ] Despite the cultural cache these musicians provided, for years Converse fought against any association to any genres or subculture. The company no doubt felt the relationships diluted the brand, and fought to maintain itself as a performance shoe designer, despite all the evidence to the contrary. More than 60 years after its flagship model was introduced, the sneaker was vastly outdated, a relic of a bygone time. While it had outlived its reign as a performance sneaker, the shoe found new life as a casual lifestyle sneaker, a reto favorite. By the '90s, when Nike and adidas sales dwarfed Converse, the All Star was still favorite among artists and musicians, and Converse finally began to cave, embracing its newfound cultural standing. By the shoes' 80th anniversary, Converse had sold more than 600 million pairs. It was an athlete’s dream shoe: the All-Stars by Converse were comfortable enough for players to use on the court, but versatile enough that they could also be worn outside. It is also for these reasons that the shoe became popular with an entirely different and emerging subculture. An Instant Punk Classic

With its just launched ‘Breaking Barriers’ campaign, Converse hopes that the diverse team they have put together inspires Filipinos at a time when we all need it most. Despite having had tremendous success in her chosen sport, winning a championship in the UAAP as well as a podium finish in beach volleyball for the Ateneo Lady Eagles, Ponggay also enjoys what she does off the court like modeling, hosting, and teaching English to kids. Taylor was so skilled at promoting the sneakers and the sport in general that in 1932, Converse put his name on the sneaker’s ankle patch. This was no Air Jordan kind of deal. Taylor reportedly only took a salary from Converse and didn’t get a commission from the sneakers that had his name on them and nearly 100 years later remain the best-selling basketball shoe in history. After leaving the All-Stars, Taylor continued to publicize his shoe—and own personal brand—by hobnobbing with customers at small-town sporting goods stores and making “special appearances” at local basketball games. There, he’d be included in the starting lineup of a local team during a pivotal game.As with so many iconic designs that have gone on to be adopted by youth tribes and various countercultural groups, its charm is its reliable simplicity, its trusty classicism. Its upper is an unchanging blank canvas upon which the wearer can choose to apply any sort of meaning or mantra – in some cases this is taken literally, with people even customising the shoe’s rubber outsole with scribbles and slogans in marker pen. This openness to interpretation has lent the shoe a rare cross-generational, cross-genre appeal that has spanned from Los Angeles gang-bangers to Seattle grunge-kids, Hunter S. Thompson to the modern-day Hypebeast. As such, it has come to occupy a rare space in the world of fashion, having touched on multiple subcultures whilst managing to transcended fleeting trends. In 2017, it is notable for being the antithesis to trend-led fashion – respite from fashion’s whims in the form of footwear.