If you’re a man of a certain age it’s safe to guess you have some strong biases against high tops. “High tops are for kids” or “high tops are too sporty” or “it looks cool on other guys but I can’t pull it off.” All of which, I think you’ll see, are pretty silly once you think about it.

It’s not so much that these kinds of anti-high top ideas are wrong as much as they are outdated and no longer relevant. And not in the “style trends come and go” kind of way, though that certainly always has a say in things.

But more so, when we were younger these things were true because there wasn’t an alternative. If you wanted a high top in the 90s there were essentially two options: canvas Chuck Taylors or thick, padded basketball high tops. The former were part of the uniform of the likes of Mister Screech Powers; an undesirable style icon to emulate. And the latter were comfortable and we beat them into the dirt but we all got to a point where the message was loud and clear: Boys wear high top sneakers. Men do not.

Of all the push-pull fashion trend changes of the last 15 years, few things have changed so dramatically than the normalization of sneakers as everyday footwear for men.

I guarantee in 99% of non-creative offices pre-2005 men wouldn’t be wearing sneakers as a part of their daily style. Hell, Casual Fridays were a common thing and you’d still have to wear nice shoes with your dressed down outfit. But now, not only are sneakers an acceptable part of the uniform in places they weren’t before, the CEO might be wearing them too.

This can be attributed to two changes – the ever casualization of clothing, of course, and the introduction of a new class of sneaker. The “smart casual” or “dressy” sneaker that we’ve all become accustomed to in the last few years didn’t exist. The type of clean, minimalist sneaker that looks polished with a pair of tailored chinos or dark denim or even dressier outfits was not as widespread. The release of more premium sneakers into the zeitgeist that could be worn intentionally, which cost just as much as a pair of well-made dress shoes, connected what has previously been a stark dichotomy: Athletic sneakers and appropriate shoes for the rest of life.

It’s true that the silhouettes and key design details of these sneakers were influenced heavily by long existing models like Stan Smiths, Blazers, or Chuck Taylors, all which had been sold and popular before the 1980s – 1963, 1973, and 1922 respectively. Importantly however, and something it’s easy to forget in the modern age of tech-designed athletic footwear, these shoes were created to play sports. These, and others, like the Reebok Club C in 1985, worked their way into daily life, first among kids and then the casual weekends of adults. My father certainly wore the Club C to BBQs and the movies well into the 90s, but I never saw him wear them to anything that wasn’t a strictly casual affair.