The former player, once a world No 1, also inspired a defining Adidas shoe and is the subject of a revealing new documentary
For sports fans of a certain age, the seasonal queues that form around shoe stores in anticipation of the latest Jordan sneakers are a painful reminder of the many young people who only know of the hoops legend as an athletic brand. But well before Nike reduced Michael to a Jumpman silhouette, Adidas was hawking Stan Smiths – the leather, low-top kicks that became such a fashion statement among rockers and rappers that perhaps more young people have no idea the mustachioed face on the tongue belongs to one of the most consequential players in tennis history. “A lot of sneaker enthusiasts want to understand the heritage and story behind it,” says the director Danny Lee. His latest film answers the essential question: Who Is Stan Smith?
Produced under LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s Uninterrupted imprimatur, Who Is Stan Smith? revisits the life and times of the former world No 1, from his working-class beginnings to his improbable bond with Arthur Ashe to his even more improbable emergence as a style icon – a SoCal James Bond, Sean Connery in country club kit. That’s despite, as one of his children helpfully points out in the doc, Smith rocking his trademark top lip strip for the better part of the last 50 years. That ’stache wasn’t just all the rage during Smith’s prime (in the late-60s and early-70s, mostly), it was part of a sandy-haired, cerulean-eyed 6ft 4in all-American package that the super agent Donald Dell turned into one of the most commercial billboards in sport. And yet: the glamor of the epoch has nothing on these times. “Now they’ve got teams, they’ve got people doing the jet set thing,” says the 77-year-old Smith, recalling the days on tour when it was just him and his wife, Margie. “It’s still tough as a professional athlete, but back then she and I were the team more or less.”