Crafted footwear Cages
“REGARDLESS OF THE IMMENSE MANUAL SKILL REQUIRED FOR WEAVING, QUILTING, CROCHET AND EMBROIDERY, TRADITIONALLY FEMALE CRAFTS HAVE BEEN HISTORICALLY DENIED PUBLIC ELEVATION TO THE SAME STATUS AS MALE-DOMINATED ARTISTIC EQUIVALENTS SUCH AS WOODWORKING, METALSMITHING, SCULPTURE, AND ARCHITECTURE.”
-Paraphrased from Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” text at the Brooklyn Museum
Heir Series, launched in Holiday 2024, was the first Jordan Basketball footwear model constructed based on female athlete insight. The highlight of the design features a flexible TPU cage “inspired by the connection and teamwork central to the women’s game surrounds the shoe, driving support and comfort while preventing ankle rolling, the most common injury among women hoopers.” [quote from Nike Newsroom]
As a part of the Heir Series Color and Materials Design team, one of the first colorways we designed was inspired by stained glass, in reference to the term “glass ceiling.” This term was coined in 1978 by writer and consultant Marilyn Loden to describe the cultural challenges women face when their careers stagnate at middle-management roles, preventing them from attaining higher leadership or executive positions.
Erawan Museum Bangkok - Alamy
To execute the stained glass narrative, our color designer printed a stained glass pattern onto the underside of the cage. However, the execution ended up being too costly on molded TPU to green light for production so we colored blocked the upper meshes instead.
A Book of Sundry Draughts (Walter Gidde, published 1615)
However, I was intrigued by the idea of bringing a labor-intensive, handcrafted process such as stained glass into a mass-manufactured component such a footwear cage, and personally curious to push this material concept forward on my own.
After dozens of sketches and material experiments, I created four cage prototypes that pay homage to the history of women’s decorative crafts, the results of which are detailed below. Various footwear materials, hand work, and post-processes were used to achieve novel textures, colors, and finishing effects.
1. Stained Glass
2. Tufting
3. Bobbin Lacework
4. Passementerie Handweaving
Although the four cage components are functional, providing stability and containment around the upper, justifying cost of production would have been challenging given price points of the inline Jordan models I was currently working on. The goal of this personal exercise however was to test the boundaries of footwear manufacturing technology and apply athlete-driven insights to hand-crafted material approaches. The groundwork has been laid for me to evolve these techniques for a future project, perhaps one that is better suited to a capsule collection or PE model.
