®A sports shoe can develop meaning that has almost nothing to do with playing the sport it was designed for.
Models from adidas and other sportswear brands became associated with British casual and terrace culture. Within those scenes, selection, condition, rarity and recognition could matter alongside — or instead of — athletic performance.
That second life changes how the object should be read. The shoe begins as product design, but community use adds another layer of classification. The important question becomes not only “what was this shoe engineered to do?” but “what did owning this particular shoe communicate here?”
Trainers are useful because they show how users rewrite product meaning without redesigning the object itself.
Culture can change the function of recognition. The outsole remains the same; the social code around it does not.