Sneakerhead Theatre Of The Absurd: A Bootleg of a Bootleg Nike and The Return of the Upside Down Swoosh

Things are getting weird out there…

Raff’s vintage sneakers compared with Maden ‘Fake Series’ retro upside down swoosh sneakers.

Here at the Deffest blog we’re all about a groundbreaking post and we think this might be a new milestone in sneaker history - the first time we’ve ever seen a bootleg of a bootleg. This post was brought to you by the power of Google’s Lens tool. We recently picked up and reviewed the vintage sneaker book by Mikiji Nagai’s called ‘C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting.’ While we were researching that book we used Google Lens to find more information on it we came across this link to a brand called ‘Maden Wear’ series of sneakers called the ‘Fake Series’ and donning another upside down Nike swoosh. See photos below:

As best as we can tell what happened here is that a factory purchased the Mikiji Nagai book then went rogue and began making knock offs of the sneakers in the book, shockingly including a copy of Raff’s brand 1970’s upside down swoosh Nike bootleg. There is no tongue or heel label on these shoes outside of the footbed which says Maden C-CLASS sneaker. Just to be clear we are not promoting these sneakers but merely reporting on it. The sneakers in the photos above are low quality construction and an overall poor design. We’d much rather have the OG Raff’s or some proper 1970’s old school Nike runners. One last note - we reached out to Mikiji Nagai for a comment but did not hear back.

Deffest Book Club: Mikiji Nagai's 'C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting.'

Today we’re looking at the excellent Japanese sneaker collector book ‘‘C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting” by Mikiji Nagai. We picked up this book because we’ve been continuing to research the strange case of the vintage Kinney NBA Le Village upside down swoosh sneakers to either confirm or disprove that they may have been manufactured by Nike. We’re still digging into that post and will hopefully have some kind of update down the line. This C-Class sneaker collecting book was published by Graphic-sha in 2021 and features 160 pages of 1970s and 80s deep cuts from the vintage sneaker market in Japan.

C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting. Vintage sneaker book by Mikiji Nagai. Published by Graphic-Sha.

Cobra, Osaga, Jets and Cedar Crest 1970s and 80s vintage sneakers.

The book features some great photos of vintage runners and and other old school sneakers from a long list of brands including Airwalk, Asahi, Asics, Avia, Baliston, Bata, Bauer, Bravas, Brooks, Butting, Buster Brown, Cedar Crest, Cobra, Etonic, Jets, Jox, Kaepa, Karhu, KangaROOS, Keds, K-Swiss, Mizuno, Moonstar, Osaga, Romika, Saucony, Spot-Bilt, Vans, Wilson and more. The upside down swoosh sneakers on the cover were made by a brand call Raff’s shoes.

Raff’s brand 1970’s / 80’s upside down swoosh bootleg Nike sneakers.

If anyone is in the market for a holiday gift for the sneakerhead in your life this would be a cool item to give and we’ve included the book information below:

Author: Mikiji Nagai

Title: ‘C-Class sneaker collection’

ISBN: 978-4-7661-3489-6

Publisher: Graphic-sha

We’ll be posting articles a couple of more articles that reference this book over the next couple of days so stay tuned.

Complex Sneakers: How Nike Bootlegged Its Own Sneakers

MARCH 2022 UPDATE: These Nike ‘One Line’ shoes will be posted for sale by auction with Heritage Auctions between April 7 - April 20, 2022. Please check the Heritage Auctions website at HA.com if you are interested in buying them.

Putting up a quick post to give a shout out to the team over at Complex sneakers for covering the ultra rare Nike ‘One Line’ sneakers. If you have time you should check out the article ‘How Nike Bootlegged Its Own Sneakers’ by Tim Newcomb at the Complex website.

For more on the history of the obscure Nike ‘One Line’ brand you can check out our blog post ‘The Rarest Nike Shoes Ever Don't Even Have A Swoosh.’ These sneakers have an extraordinarily strange history and helped to save Nike from going out of business back in the day.

Four Stripe Legends: Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys faux adidas SL76

Yesterday we posted an old school adidas SL76 sneaker ad which reminded me that we had a reader of the blog reach out awhile ago looking for sneakers that were like the SL76… except with 4 stripes. They passed along this photo of Dennis Wilson from the Beach Boys and Karen Lamm from 1977 right before Wilson released Pacific Ocean Blue. If you want to check out other 4 stripe celebrity sneaker photos we have also posted about Neil Young and Dale Earnhardt Sr and if you want to see a goldmine of celebrity sneaks you should check out the @trainer.spotting instagram account.

Sneakers from the 1979 movie The Warriors

Last month I posted on legendary rock n roll hall of fame singer Neil Young as a 4 stripe man. Here's another piece of 4 stripe bootleg sneaker history. In the opening credits of the 1979 cult classic movie 'The Warriors' one of the gangs is wearing some 4 stripe sneakers at the 2:56 marker in this video…

These were likely Kmart Trax or Sears The Winner II brand but could also be Bob Wolf brand sneakers.

Going through the rest of the movie most of the sneakers shown are Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. Most of The Orphans are wearing Converse and Puma but one guys in their gang has a pair of bootleg sneakers that look like a hollowed out Puma logo…

These sneakers might be either Kobe brand or Mark 5 brand.

Outside of that there are a bunch of other fast paced scenes that make it difficult to ID the sneakers…

From the still photo shoot images it looks like the Baseball Furies were wearing some yellow and black LD-1000 model runners.

Based on this photo it looks like the costume designer spray painted over the yellow nylon and Nike swoosh logo on the sides of the old yellow and orange LD-1000s.

For more info on The Warriors I’d suggest to pop over to the very awesome website Warriorsmovie.co.uk.

One last disclaimer… all movie stills and video clips displayed above are done so through “fair use” for blogging and journalistic purposes and are copyright of their respective copyright holders.

BEST OF THE WORST SNEAKER BOOTLEGS: DY BRAND 70s 80s FAKE VINTAGE NIKE

OCTOBER 2021 UPDATE: We had a tip come in on Instagram about these sneakers and they said that these are DY brand, not DJ brand so I am updating this blog post title. The 登云 characters on the label translate to deng-yun and apparently Dengyun brand is the number one leather shoe factory in Shanghai.

The last time we did a 'Best of the Bootlegs' post we were looking at the strange case of 'abibas' brand sneakers. Today we've got a great pair of bootleg 1970s or early 80s fake vintage Nike sneakers by a Chinese brand called DJ. These one of a kind old school gems with swoosh and stripe are over at @suitezero.archive who let us know about them over on Instagram.

All image credits above to @suitezero.archive on Instagram.

Kinney NBA Nike Le Village vintage sneakers

One of the things we dig about running the blog is hearing about the random vintage finds from all corners of the world. We recently heard from @cmmayse in Ohio about some new old stock vintage Kinney NBA Nike Le Village bootlegs that feature the original box, tissue paper and the upside down swoosh logo. The last I heard these sneakers had been sold but you can check them out below.

Best of the Worst sneaker bootlegs: Abibas brand sneakers

I bet you've heard of Adidas... but have you heard of Abibas? Abi Bassler's namesake brand 🤣 According to some knowledgeable heads over at reddit these are available at the Hong Kong street market and also (supposedly) sold at the Hong Kong airport too.

😳

Shout out and credit to the crappyoffbrands reddit page for this image