Jack Purcell

There was a time when the sports rags covered different games. Instead of football, prizefighting. Rather than hockey, horse racing. Instead of mixed martial arts, badminton. Maybe those aren't really athletically equivalent, but I assure you that at one time badminton was a glamorous game. One possible origin story has it that the sport was devised when guests at a fin de siècle dinner party stuck goose quills into champagne corks and batted them back and forth. The original badminton outfit? Evening dress. Pretty goddamn decadent.

By the time Canadian Jack Purcell was beating all the world's best badmintoneers in the 1930s, badminton had become a little more competitive, with thousands of players turning out for national tournaments in England, the United States, and Canada. Purcell designed a shoe to better support the foot in what had become genuine athletic competition, and thus the classic smiling shoe of canvas and rubber came to be. Originally designed for rubber manufacturer B.F. Goodrich, the Jack Purcell shoes have been made by Converse for decades. After achieving world champ status in 1933, Purcell was never again beaten, and retired 12 years later. He's an icon of a sport that has since faded, but the shoes he lent his name to are still an icon of relaxed, athletic style.

More recent Purcell fans include Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Ian Mackaye of Fugazi and Minor Threat, and pretty much anyone looking to wear a simple, low-profile sneaker that can take a beating and still look good. You can wear them hard like Mackaye used to, for years, until the smile is more of a smirk and you need to duct tape the heel together, or keep a pair fresh and clean to complement a warm weather ensemble of shorts and a polo. I might even suggest getting together a few friends, a few bottles of champagne, and a gaggle of cooperative geese for a little badminton.