Two of the WNBA’s biggest sneakerheads have won before their season even started.
Dearica Hamby, of the Las Vegas Aces, and Satou Sabally, of the Dallas Wings, both received Air Jordan 36 PEs (player exclusives) designed by Melody Ehsani. to the public.
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“Melody Ehsani Air Jordan 36 is a big deal because these days it’s really hard to get people interested in performing basketball. a pair of shoes,” said Brendan Dunne, host of “Full Size Run,” a talk show about sneakers. “But she was able to bring that energy back in a second.”
Ehsani, 42, has long dark hair with two strands of blonde hair and tends to wear a gold ring and bracelet emblazoned with symbols of her Persian heritage, rainbow spiky nails and most of the time. like always wearing a pair of sneakers. She recently designed touring gear for her husband, Flea, and his band the Red Hot Chili Peppers, before announcing on Instagram in July that she was expecting their first child.
Melody Ehsani also designed touring gear for her husband and his band the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Michelle Groskopf / The New York Times)
She also heads her eponymous streetwear brand. And as Foot Locker’s first female creative director, she was the lead designer for a pair of basketball performance sneakers. That’s rare in the athletic shoe industry, where women are often invited to “colourize” or choose new colors for a major brand’s lifestyle offerings.
A handful of WNBA players have teamed up with the athletic shoe giants specifically for players, and some elite female players, like Breanna Stewart (with Puma) and Candace Parker (Adidas), have signature performance shoes. However, at Nike and other Footwear giants, has rarely mentioned female designers of basketball sneakers, a large segment of the athletic shoe industry and a design field that has become at the heart of cultural lore. sport shoes.
Nike will not provide specific numbers on the women who have led the basketball design, and the company is still suing a sexism class action lawsuit filed in 2018 by former employees who argue that women are paid less than their male counterparts and do not play a key role. at Nike and was handled by a supervisor for inappropriate behavior.
A pair of Nike sneakers designed by Melody Ehsani at her boutique in Los Angeles (Michelle Groskopf / The New York Times)
While basketball sneakers aren’t the sales phenomenon they once were, retro releases by Jordans are still an important part of the reseller market.
And there is an industry that thrives in selling the legend of designer sneakers. Books on the smooth coffee table about landmarks sport shoes and their advertising campaigns became bestsellers. Respected designers appear on podcasts and in documentaries about creativity; they give TED Talks that go viral. To appeal to a younger audience, major museums hold exhibitions that showcase sneakers as a work of art.
After Ehsani’s designs were featured in the NBA Finals in June, when Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum wore them ahead of Game 2, she reflected on her journey from high school athlete. and NBA interns to designers. “I’m slowly working my way up to the opportunity to work on a performance shoe,” Ehsani wrote in a social media post, adding that the relationship between Tinker Hatfield, Nike’s designer behind many iconic Air Jordans, and Michael Jordan is her ultimate “dream”.
Most conversations about sneaker design begin with Hatfield and Jordan, who collaborated on 16 releases between 1993 and 2003 that set the standard for how performance basketball can surpass. through lifestyle. At Jordan’s behest, and at times against the orders of Nike executives, Hatfield made basketball shoes decorated with non-traditional materials that appealed to even non-athletic buyers. (lots of) doubles.
Famously, Hatfield included patent leather on the Jordan XIs because Jordan said he wanted one sport shoes so beautiful that it can be worn with a tuxedo. In 1996, R&B boy band Boyz II Men paired them with white suits at an awards ceremony.
In 2021, when the Design Museum in London is hosting an exhibition to show how sneakers “have become a cultural icon of our time,” says Fiona Adams, vice president of design Reebok’s footwear designer from 1990 to 2000, says.
Adams oversaw the work of designer who has become the equivalent of sneakerhead legends, and she is eager to see the piece delivered on time. She created an at-home training program to teach designers (rather than just designing in two dimensions or relying on 3D computer models) and she says her background as a shoemaker has helped her get Technological innovations like creating the ultimate in aerobics, she said, it was the first performance shoe to use a zipper.
Adams said she left the exhibition in a state of anxiety. She only counted one woman, from any major brand, whose work was included in the show. It was Judy Close, who designed Shaquille O’Neal’s signature Shaqnosis shoe for Reebok in 1992.
“So the research in the work has been done really, really disappointingly,” Adams said.
A Reebok model designed by Melody Ehsani at her boutique in Los Angeles (Michelle Groskopf / The New York Times)
Ehsani notes that there aren’t many points of reference for women who have worked on player exclusivity. “I’m almost embarrassed not knowing about any other women,” she said.
In Jordan, her design was adopted by Kelsey Amy, a senior color designer who mediates between Ehsani’s vision and Nike’s manufacturers. Amy has worked with the NBA and WNBA. is an exclusive player at Jordan, but she says she “never knew this job existed” until she landed a marketing internship at Nike in 2013. She says she was well-received by other female designers there, but with no clear industry support.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s an established network,” she said.
Suzette Henry is trying to make it easier for women and people of color to participate in show design. As the founder and instructor of the Pensole Footwear Design Academy, she teaches beginner designers how to design and use materials that will stand out in performance sneakers.
After working in materials research and design for Guess, Skechers and later Nike, Henry was scouted by Jordan in 2000 to become the brand’s first materials designer. Perhaps her most famous contribution is the stingray skin, which she developed after a documentary inspired her to create a viable alternative for mass production. After several research calls with oceanographers and a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Henry’s synthetic “skins” were incorporated on several retro models and special Jordan projects. (Jordan was so enamored with it, he used it for his golf bag.)
Henry said that Nike always attracts female designers who are qualified to hold leadership positions in the field of performance design but have a glass ceiling at the director level. “It’s just sexist,” she said, adding that many top executives are men who tend to uphold other men. “Our industry, like most companies in America, is guilty of being very comfortable with people who look like them.”
As sales of basketball sneakers declined, female designers looked to design other types of performance shoes, in durable and low-impact sports equipment. Lululemon, a multi-billion dollar sports company, announced in March that it would introduce running and training shoes; Adidas did business quickly through the Stella McCartney line; and Allyson Felix, retired Olympic sprinter and former Nike supporter, whose own brand of sneakers, Saysh.
While there have been few breakthroughs for female designers, Ehsani says designing products featuring a basketball star is still her dream. In that vision, she couldn’t decide whether LeBron James, Ja Morant or the high school female phenom Juju Watkins was Jordan to her Hatfield.
“I’m not even in a place where I have a taste for it,” Ehsani said, adding that she’s “very eager” for the chance that the player won’t matter. She then added a plea referring to Nike’s famous tagline.
“Let me do this, like, just give me a chance to do it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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