A dress-shoe family, a borrowed name and two initials.

British Knights began as a new name inside an old New York shoe company. The International Directory of Company Histories, in a profile of Jack Schwartz Shoes, Inc. written in 1997, says the firm was founded in Manhattan’s Tribeca district in 1936 by its namesake, Jack Schwartz, and spent its first decades making men’s dress shoes under the Charles Walker and Kent & Howard names. The family moved into athletic footwear in 1975 with a brand called Pro Players, which the directory says found a following in the Midwest and on the East Coast.

The British Knights name arrived in 1983. The directory says it was chosen to reflect the influence of the United Kingdom on the athletic shoe market and to suggest quality, and that the line started with a simple canvas boat shoe. That style did not catch on, but the name did, and from 1985 the family began phasing out Pro Players and the older dress lines to design sports shoes under the new name. English Wikipedia dates the brand’s first sneaker collection to the same year. The directory says that, unlike the company’s American-made dress shoes, British Knights shoes were made by unaffiliated manufacturers, most of them in Asia.

The family ran the business across generations. The directory names the four Schwartzes in charge in the 1990s — chief executive Bernard Schwartz, his nephews Jack and Larry, and his niece Janet Schwartz Feldman — and credits Larry Schwartz, as chief marketing executive, with seeing New York as a launch pad for urban styles. It records that buyers shortened the name to “BKs”, and that the shoes’ bold designs and colours found their audience in the city before suburban buyers followed. Writing about the 2014 revival, Billboard described British Knights as a sneaker brand popularised by its association with hip-hop culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and English Wikipedia describes the brand of that decade as music-driven, with its appeal centred on young men in American cities.

Rappers on television, a diamond in the sole and a split by territory.

Advertising grew with the brand. The directory says the company did not air television advertising until 1988, relying before then on print, billboards, radio and word of mouth, and that its spending on television and cable airtime, especially on MTV, rose sharply in the years that followed. English Wikipedia says the rapper Kool Moe Dee fronted the brand’s introduction to television. Musicians, rather than athletes, carried those campaigns: Wikipedia dates the endorsement deal with MC Hammer to 1990, while the directory dates his hiring to 1991, and both say the company sponsored his concert tour. The directory, citing ADWEEK, describes one Hammer commercial with the tagline “Your mother wears Nikes” and an umbrella message urging viewers to “Choose Change”.

In 1991 the company launched Dymacel, a cushioning system that the directory says was based in part on the diamond in the British Knights logo; Wikipedia describes it as diamond-shaped green silicone set into a window in the sole. Basketball players followed the musicians — Derrick Coleman of the New Jersey Nets from 1991 and Lloyd Daniels of the San Antonio Spurs in 1993, according to Wikipedia, which says both appeared in television advertising. The directory also records the formation of a British Knights International division in 1991 and a separate LUGZ line of boots, jeans and casual wear introduced in 1993.

Ownership split by territory at the end of the decade. English Wikipedia says that in 1998 Jack Schwartz Shoes sold the British Knights trademarks in many territories to a European company, which went on making British Knights footwear for Europe and South America, and that this European business, which it describes as separate from the American brand, belongs to the Dutch Achten Fashion Group. In North America the family kept the name. On 14 February 2014 Billboard reported that the music manager Scooter Braun was reviving British Knights in a joint venture with Jack Schwartz Shoes, with the designer Darren Romanelli, known as DrX, as creative director; the first designs were to be shown at Sneaker Con in Las Vegas on 17 February and to go on sale at select retailers from 15 March. Wikipedia says the revival was run through a new company, British Knights N.A., from the Jack Schwartz Shoes office in New York by the family that launched the brand.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are athletic apparel and sneaker names. On a sneaker, a brand’s identity is usually carried by a handful of small, repeated places rather than by one large surface: the mark stitched or printed on the side panel, the label sewn to the tongue, the heel tab, the insole print and the box the pair is sold in. Each of those places is small, and each is seen at a different distance — the side mark from across a street, the tongue label from arm’s length, the insole only once the shoe is in the hand.

The box is a design surface of its own. It carries the name, the colours and often a lid graphic, and for many buyers it is the first piece of the brand they hold. Names in this category also change hands, move into licensing or return after a gap, so the same mark can appear on very different shoes over the years.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the brand, who owns it now, how its marks and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A borrowed name, two initials and a diamond badge.

The British Knights identity rests on a name and a small badge. The name borrowed from Britain — the directory says it was meant to reflect British influence on athletic shoes and to signal quality — and wearers soon cut it down to two letters. English Wikipedia describes a diamond-shaped BK logo plate fixed to every shoe, and quotes a line built around it: “the shoe ain’t nothin’ without the BK button.” The diamond reached beyond the badge: the directory says the 1991 Dymacel cushioning drew on it, and Wikipedia describes the Dymacel inserts themselves as diamond-shaped.

A rapper fronted the brand’s introduction to television, Wikipedia says, and the 2014 revival returned to that idea with a new slogan, “Artists are the new athletes”, which Billboard reported at the time. The same report described the first two relaunch designs as an update of the classic black high-top and a version built around the Union Jack, and said Braun and Romanelli planned limited-edition designs with street artists. Wikipedia adds that the relaunch high-tops in black and white carried the British flag.

For a design guide, British Knights shows how a borrowed national reference, two initials and a diamond badge can carry a sneaker name through a family business, a split between continents and a revival. Compare it with LA Gear, a Los Angeles sneaker name of the same years, and Reebok, another athletic name of that decade. For this guide we use knight navy, union red and diamond silver with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep British Knights’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.