Originally Posted by Antdiddy
/\ the XIXs were an inspired shoe. you just gotta know how to rock'em. and the Bord VIIs sat on shelves for hella long. I got a pair for $50 in a shoe store called Copelands. a few people here and there even wanted them. Thats why you hardly see anyone with them. hype is on them bcuz this is the first retro not cuz its the illest design or cw.
....Gotta know how to rock'em? I didn't know you had to wear a shoe a certain way in order for them to look good. They're basketball shoes first and foremost. I don't wear sneakers when I go out, so I really don't care about there being a certain way to make them look good while you patrol the mall, or go clubbing in them. I'm concerned with how they look on the basketball court, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call them hideous like some do, I certainly wasn't impressed by them, either.
As for Bordeaux' sitting, there isn't a single pair of Air Jordans I didn't see still sitting in stores on clearance at the end of the "model year" during the late '80s/'90s (outside of the playoff XIs, of course). Not a single one, and this is in the Chicagoland area, so lack of popularity of Air Jordans wasn't the issue. Hell, I had bought my original black/infrared several months after release, wore them for 8 or so months, then....ummmm...."accidentally" popped the air pocket, took it back to the store I got it from, and had them swapped out for another pair of black/infrared under warranty. I had originally popped them because the carmines had come out, and I wanted to switch them for those, but since they still had the black ones (almost a year after release date), they wouldn't let me do that. So even the beloved, super popular VI infrareds were in stock in abundance back then. There were several factors as to why:
1. $125+ was in insane amount of money for a pair of shoes when Air Jordans first started hitting this price tag. Even today, while people don't suffer the same sticker shock they used to from seeing such prices, it's still considered expensive for a pair of sneakers, so you can imagine what it was like 20 years ago. Back then, you either begged your parents relentlessly, or if you were old enough, got a job and worked your $*+ off all just to scrounge the money together for ONE pair a year......ONE! You would pick your favorite colorway for that year's release, and that was it. There were very, very few people (even in the well-off suburb I lived in) who could afford multiple pairs a year. That's what it meant to have a pair of Air Jordans back then.
Today, people "cop" multiple pairs of the SAME COLORWAY quite often, multiplied by however many releases/colorways they want that year, without batting an eye at the $200, or $500, etc. that they spend on them. It has become far more acceptable to not only spend that kind of money for a pair of sneakers, but to buy several pairs of them at that price. It only stands to reason that if a shoe is hot, it will sell out much, much quicker today than it did 20 years ago. Yet STILL, save for a few very popular QS or limited releases, you can find most of the retros on clearance months after their release. If the opportunity for them to sell out much quicker today is there, yet in most instances, they STILL don't sell out, it only makes sense they wouldn't sell out back then.
2. Despite the huge demand for AJs at the time, they so greatly mass produced them back then that the production exceeded even the huge demand for them. Like I said earlier, save for the playoff XIs, which is the first time I had ever experienced a limited AJ/AJs selling out on release date (and only Footlocker in the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora got in one more shipment a couple days later), there isn't a single pair of original Air Jordans that I didn't see make their way to discounted prices in order to clear them out for the next model that had already been released. It was very common back then, not just for the VII Bordeaux, but for ALL of the AJs.
3. The Hatfield designed Air Jordans were radically different than anything being made at the time. This naturally caused a division with the masses as to reaction to those designs. With ANY AJ in the series, you will find plenty of people who think it's amazing, revolutionary, and a classic, just as you will find plenty of people who think the same shoe is f*cked up, abstract garbage. You could even say that as popular as they were, they may have sold even better had they stuck to more mainstream designs that would have been more acceptable/easier to digest by the masses. The designs were way ahead of their time. It wasn't until years later that people started to appreciate their brilliance.
Anyhow, I didn't claim the VIIs to be the "illest" design, or the Bordeaux to be the best colorway. I simply said that there is no comparison to those shoes vs. the XIX (in any colorway). The VII may not be considered "holy grail" status by the majority of Jordan fanatics, but it is still considered a classic by most, and love it or hate it, the Bordeaux was certainly the most unique of the colorways for the VII. Point is, they had significance to the Air Jordan line, where as the XIX are just there. Case in point, how often do you hear the XIX talked about in any capacity?