BENGALURU: James Raleigh Thomas has much to look forward to in August, the foremost being adding two more shoes to his collection of over 45 pairs. Having already received an ultimatum from his mother, Thomas now plans to get a little sneaky. “She usually doesn’t realise I have added more sneakers to my collection till the day I wear it,” the 28-year-old network engineer says with a laugh.

Thomas is one among many who form the city’s ‘sneakerhead’ community, comprising people who are kicked about everything to do with sneakers. While you don’t have to have a vast collection to qualify as a sneakerhead, many are guilty (and proudly so) of having numbers that run into hundreds. This love prompted Sangeet Paryani to open Superkicks India – a multi-brand sneaker studio – in Bengaluru. The second outlet in India, after Mumbai, opened last week.

But this love for sneakers isn’t merely about collecting shoes for collection’s sake. Sneaker culture is mostly inspired by basketball and skateboarding. So it comes as no surprise then that most of Thomas’ shoes are basketball shoes, mainly Air Jordans – shoes created exclusively for former American basketball player Michael Jordan. “I collect Jordans because of what he has achieved. Most of my sneakers have some history attached. For example, the Jordan 1 was released in the ’84 or ’85 season. It is important to us because that’s where everything started with the Jordan line. Then there are the Jordan Infrared for his first championship, and the Jordan 12 for the flu game, which is when he took his team to victory by scoring 35-40 points,” explains Thomas, who is also the co-founder of Sole Culture Bengaluru, an Instagram account dedicated to the community.

Agrees Nandith Jaisimha, who has 15 pairs of the Jordan 1 alone, and buys 2-3 pairs of shoes a month. “It used to be 5-10 before,” he adds, calling his love an addiction of sorts. The filmmaker and photographer even has a closet that was customised for his collection, which currently houses 120 pairs. The remaining 30 are dispersed between his other house and studio. One of the most expensive pairs he owns cost him around `2 lakh.

Interestingly, it isn’t just the shoes the community collects. The boxes, they say, are just as important (much to the irritation of their family). Calling it an important storytelling instrument, Thomas says a sneakerhead can probably tell you which shoe is inside just by looking at the box. “Each one is unique. For example, all Jordan 1s are in a black box with a red Nike swoosh,” he says, adding that the boxes are stored all over his room.

This craze hasn’t gone unnoticed among retailers either, and prompted Myntra to launch a club to showcase an array of premium kicks, some of which, they claim, are brought for the first time in India. “Myntra Sneaker Club, launched as a ‘shop in shop’ in March 2017, was also a result of the surge in searches for the ‘sneaker’ keyword on Google and the Myntra platform,” says Amar Nagaram, head, Myntra Jabong, adding that Bengaluru accounts for 10-12 per cent of the audience on the platform. “Supra, Pepsi, NBA and Onitsuka Tiger are some of the brands available on Myntra Sneaker Club. We are in talks with other brands too,” he adds.

While women make up only 30 per cent of the retailer’s audience, Shivani Boruah, who owns 60 sneaker pairs, says she has noticed more women taking to the trend. Boruah is particularly kicked about the due credit the industry is paying to its female clientele. “Everything from the silhouette to the colours of the Falcon by adidas Originals was launched mainly for women,” she says. “It’s nice to see shoes being designed just for us.”