freeamfva: The Nike Air Swoopes And The Disappearance Of Women's Signature Shoes

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The Nike Air Swoopes And The Disappearance Of Women's Signature Shoes



Dawn Staley is the head women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina. She won three Olympic gold medals and is one of the greatest WNBA players of all time. And when she was a kid, basketball shoes were everything.Get more news about air jordan shoes white,you can vist ajsize.com!

"You know, I grew up in the projects of North Philly," Staley says. "I grew up wearing a lot of different sneakers. I didn’t care what I looked like from my ankles up — I had to have the newest, the best pair of sneakers out there."

Staley remembers wearing Charles Barkley’s signature line. She wasn’t much of a Jordan fan. In any case, she wore men’s shoes.Everyone I played with were males," Staley says. "That’s what I wore. That’s what I was comfortable wearing. And I just really didn’t know the difference."

Basketball shoes for women didn’t exist when Staley was growing up. But before long, that changed. In the summer of 1996, Staley and Team USA won their first gold medal at the Olympic Games in Atlanta."Women's basketball was pretty much at an all-time high," Staley says.

The American Basketball League, or ABL, had been founded a year earlier. The WNBA followed shortly after. And as the country saw women’s basketball gaining popularity, Nike saw a groundbreaking business opportunity.

"To me now, later in life, I feel that it was more special and amazing than it felt at the time," say Marni Gerber, a Senior Design Director at Nike.

In the lead-up to the ’96 Olympics, Gerber and Nike partnered with Team USA star Sheryl Swoopes to design a signature basketball shoe. By then, Nike had released 10 Michael Jordan signature shoes in the Air Jordan line. Several other NBA players had their own models, too. But in the women’s game, Sheryl Swoopes' shoe would be the first. And for Gerber, that meant rethinking what basketball shoes could be.

"At the time, basketball shoes were really overbuilt," Gerber says. "Sheryl’s not giant like some of these guys are. So, how could I design a shoe that was less shoe and more her?"