Girls not only wear sneakers, they design them too. Yet even more rare than seeing women in this industry which has traditionally been dominated by men on both the professional and consumer front, has been seeing Black women at the helm creatively.
“Everything that I did, I did it by myself,” says longtime serial entrepreneur and footwear designer Kimberly Shane. “Everything that I did was so scary and there was no one there to help me navigate from a woman's perspective. I never wanted another Black woman to have to go through that ever.”
Shane’s experience led her to mentor other Black women interested in design in her hometown of Miami, Florida, many of whom have now paid that mentorship forward to other Black girls, creating a natural pipeline of talent from the southern Florida city into the footwear industry. One of those mentees is Cheresse Thornhill-Goldson, Director of Design Education & Growth at adidas’ School for Experiential Education in Design (S.E.E.D.). Through a partnership with the Black Talent in Design & Fashion Fund, S.E.E.D. is helping foster the next generation of creatives with an interest in footwear.
“Our mission is to create opportunities for, historically, women of color, but we also want to be able to create access for people who have a creative spirit but didn't know that design exists or their parents didn't know that you can make a career out of creativity and that natural born talent,” explains Thornhill-Goldson. “In this day and age, you're able to come by the education on YouTube and social media, but then what do you do with it? How do you make a living out of it? With S.E.E.D. we’ve been able to upskill talent and usher them right into the brand.”
Eliya Jackson is one of the women who’s benefited from S.E.E.D.’s efforts. The assistant footwear designer for adidas chose industrial design as her area of focus while a sophomore at Miami’s Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH), merging her love of art with her experience on the court playing basketball.
“I started sketching sneakers, and then it became more serious when Cheresse came into the class,” Jackson recalls. “She had a bag full of shoes that she’d worked on throughout her journey and that was a spark for me to be like, okay, I could do something like this. I put all my effort into footwear design from that moment forward.”
Fellow footwear designer and DASH graduate Precious Hannah-King had a similar experience after meeting Cheresse in her sophomore year of high school as well. “I never had an example of a female being in the footwear industry and seeing someone that looked exactly like me in that position where I wanted to be, it was just so inspiring,” she says.
To celebrate its Honoring Black Excellence platform, adidas launched a special edition pair of its Forum Mod Low sneaker featuring a pattern inspired by the 2023 honorees. The product is the first of Jackson’s that will go to market following her graduation from S.E.E.D. and is a realization of the work fellow Black women designers and mentors put in to ensure greater diversity in their industry.
“Maya Angelo has a quote that I'm pretty obsessed with: ‘You Shouldn’t go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands, you need to be able to throw something back; I feel like that quote captures our story so well,” says fellow DASH grad Ashley Comeaux, a Vice President of Product Design with more than 15 years of experience in the world of athleisure, who was inspired by Shane and Thornhill-Goldson to enter the field.
“It's rewarding to be in a position to have had a leg up based on someone else's selflessness and I feel like in life you have to be able to take that blessing and bestow it upon someone else. It then becomes your responsibility and your obligation to do that, and doing so shows your humanness and your care for making sure that someone else has an opportunity, especially in this space.”
Echoing that sentiment, Thornhill-Goldson adds, “We're all here because of each other. We all talked about not being able to do something if you haven't seen it done before, and just seeing someone who was in a mentor relationship with us out doing it made us feel like we can do it too.”
Honoring Black Excellence recognizes individuals from Black communities who are positively impacting others' lives. adidas is committed to co-creating meaningful and lasting change within the Black community for future athletes and creators. To learn more visit adidas.com.
