How to tell if Nike is vintage

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Nike has been providing athletes with the optimal sportswear for athletic performance for over 50 years. It’s emergence as a powerhouse in fashion began in the mid 80s with its partnership with Michael Jordan. This helped propel Nike into a brand that you would wear as fashion instead of just sportswear.

Even though Nike was only really considered as a fashion label after this time, some of the original vintage Nike clothing is simply astounding in terms of its quality and design. Vintage Nike really is special, and the popularity of Nike’s vintage clothing has been booming over the last few years. So, to make sure you don’t let a vintage Nike sweatshirt slip through your fingers, you’d best become wise in the ways of vintage identification.

This guide will explain how we use a combination of logos, tags, and other product information to see if a piece is vintage.

How to tell if Nike is vintage from the tags

The best place to start when it comes to identifying vintage Nike is the tags. Essentially every piece of Nike clothing will have a tag at the time of its manufacturing, and because Nike regularly update the design of these tags, we can assess the design to work out which era a vintage Nike piece was made in. It should be noted that due to the nature of global manufacturing all the timelines of when tags were used are estimates. Even Nike themselves would have a difficult time of pinning down an exact date of production based purely on tags. But if you’re still struggling to figure it out, you can submit your tags here for us to have a look at and try and investigate.

The Vintage Nike Pinwheel Label

• This label was used from 1978 to 1982
• This was one of Nike’s very first mass manufacturing labels
• The logo used on these labels is almost unrecognisable when compared to today’s logos and labels
• Nike used a pinwheel design which is a repetition of the Nike swoosh in a circle to create a pinwheel effect
• Nike’s font was so different to the modern font, that you would be forgiven for mistaking a Nike item with these tags as fake

The Vintage Nike Orange Label

• This label was used from 1978 to 1983
• This tag design laid the foundation for the future of Nike tags
• Nike’s now famous font was combined with the swoosh for the first time on tags
• Tags from this time uniquely use an orange swoosh

The Vintage Nike Blue Label

• This label was used from 1984 to 1987
• Nike continued combining the swoosh and the Nike spellout
• Tags from this time were monochrome
• Measurements were also used on tags around this time

The Vintage Nike Grey Label

• This label was used from 1987 to 1992
• A grey rectangle set against a white label with a red Nike logo in the centre
• These tags often have a thicker and higher quality feel to its predecessors
• Measurements were also included on tags from this time

The Vintage Nike Grey Label

• This label was used from 1987 to 1994
• Most features of the design are the same
• The main change from the last tags is the removal of the measurements
• The logo and font appear slightly stretched when compared to its predecessor

The Vintage Nike White Label

• This label was used in the mid to late 1990s
• An all white background is offset by the red swoosh and Nike spellout
• Whilst it’s hard to capture in photos these tags often have a slight sheen/shine to them and are thick
• They don’t include the measurements but began using the size lettering of other languages (“G” standing for “Grande”)

The Vintage Nike White Label

• This label was used in the late 90s to the early 00s
• White was the primary colour of these labels
• The quality of them is much thinner
• And some didn’t use the Nike spellout

The Vintage Nike Two Tone Grey Label

• This label was used in the early to mid 00s
• The two tone grey was a significant departure from previous designs
• Removed the Nike spellout entirely in favour of the swoosh symbol

Vintage Nike tags through the years

How to tell if Nike is vintage from the design and colours

During its early years (the 70s and 80s), Nike tended to use primary colours for its apparel and used simple toned-down graphics. They would include their logo on most of the clothes they produced at this time but would usually made it a discreet chest or sleeve logo. They also liked to use the pinwheel logo at this time which was essentially a concentric circle of Nike swooshes with alternating colours.

Into the late 80s and early 90s the designs started to become bolder and more eye catching. The huge boost in Nike’s popularity meant that people were often keen to showcase that they were wearing Nike, and in line with this Nike started to use bigger logos and slogans that represented the companies’ values.

How to tell if Nike is vintage from the materials used

One indicator of the age of a Nike item is the materials to create them. Most Nike vintage clothing such as t-shirts and sweatshirts used a 50 50 cotton polyester blend. Nike did not debut it’s drifit material until the late 00s, so if the wetsuit materials are used on a Nike item its unlikely that its vintage.