How fashion’s most important trainer was born on a Prada boat

Though a 172-year-old boat race and 2000s Harlem fashion might not seem as if they would have a lot in common, the bond that links them is stronger than you might think. Despite being almost two centuries apart, the America’s Cup competition and New York’s fashionable neighbourhoods are forever linked, and that’s thanks to the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli sailing team. Founded in 1997, the team was put together by Mr Prada himself Patrizio Bertelli, and an Argentine yacht designer called Germán Frers, when both men had hopes to participate in the next America’s Cup competition, taking place in the year 2000. 

But where does New York fashion come into this, I hear you ask? Well, with the birth of a high-performance sailing team, Bertelli and the Luna Rossa squad also needed some high-performance kit to tackle the upcoming competition. Because of this, Prada conceived the America’s Cup sneaker in 1997, and that was the beginning of the brand’s now-iconic Linea Rossa line. Though the shoe was originally designed for performance, its distinctive silhouette and oversized rubber sole quickly gained a wider audience – particularly among New York’s 90s streetwear aficionados – and the sneaker soon became the pinnacle of cool outside of the yachting community.

Acting as an archive of that time, the Instagram account The Cuplture documents the people of Harlem, Queens, the Bronx and the rest of New York City, proudly showing off their America’s Cup sneakers in grainy stills taken on pocket digital cameras. Curated by the Paris-based Prada fanatic Marc Gandziri, The Cuplture account not only drops vintage pics of people wearing the trainers, but accompanies them with first-person written accounts too. “I remember walking in my new high school cafe Bishop Loughlin in September 2003, seeing kids with all black shoes with [a] red stripe” writes one person beneath a photograph of them wearing the sneakers on an NYC subway cart. “I did my research, waited til’ Christmas, went to the official store in Soho. I ended up getting all burgundy leather and red hightop because [Prada] did sales around Christmas.”

“My first encounter with the America’s Cup sneakers would have been late 2000/2001 when we moved back to London from NYC,” says another account, wearing the trainers with long jorts and an oversized tee. “I asked one of my fly female friends what the trappers were wearing on road now, and she said Prada. So I copped a brown long over coat, matching bucket hat and a pair of strapped ones early.” Elsewhere on the account, Gandziri posts pictures from further afield too, with snaps of people in America’s Cup trainers from Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Atlanta and even Brixton in south London.

It’s clear that, since the 1990s, Prada has led the pack on luxury fashion’s sneaker obsession. If you look at the landscape of high fashion trainers now, the market is completely saturated, with all major fashion houses producing their own sneaker variations. But it was back in 1997 that Prada did it first, officially debuting the pair at the SS99 season, then capitalising on the trainers’ success by launching high-top and strapped versions for AW02. Today, the obsession with the America’s Cup sneakers continues, with the young fashion forward crowds of international style capitals doing anything to get their hands on a pair. Look on second-hand resale sites like Depop, and there’s thousands of results showing beat up trainers from the 2000s. Or in Barcelona last weekend, down on the feet of sailing fanatics cheering on the Luna Rossa team in the 37th America’s cup. Nowadays, the industry may be overrun with imitations, but fashion’s most important trainer was born on a Prada boat.