Adidas, Nike, Vans: women’s sneakers – not just pink – are on the rise and it is a move that is ‘long overdue’
- While it has been a long time in coming, the sneaker industry is finally focusing on creating shoes for women that are designed by women
- Adidas and Nike are focusing on releases for women, big streetwear labels are headed by female CEOs and women-only sneaker stores are drawing in the crowds
“Shrink it and pink it” has long been the attitude towards marketing to women, and sneakers have been no exception – but the industry has begun to fight back, as seen in the newly published book She Kicks.
The book was written by Nav Gill, the former editor of online platform Hypebae, and Sanne Poeze, the founder of @girlonkicks on Instagram.
Gill saw that, though the industry was moving on from outdated thinking, women within the industry were still not being heard.
“Through my time working in the sneaker industry, I was lucky enough to hear a lot of stories of women who were – or had been – in the industry,” she says.
Though many of them had spearheaded huge changes, Gill felt that their stories “weren’t really getting widespread attention in the same way as their male peers, whose work was often spotlighted in coffee table books”.
She Kicks is her way of helping to correct that imbalance.
