Ivy Park founder Beyoncé, Sacai designer Chitose Abe, Ambush designer Yoon Ahn, Foot Locker women’s creative director Melody Ehsani, Puma women’s basketball creative director June Ambrose, tennis legend Serena Williams — all have played a task in increasing visibility for ladies within the sneaker industry.

Arriving just in time for holiday gifting, “She Kicks,” $95, shines a light-weight on these women and more, featuring the trailblazing designers, executives, athletes, entrepreneurs and influencers who’re changing the game.

Written by Nav Gill, former editor of Hypebae, and Sanne Poeze, the Dutch inflluencer and sneaker collector, the book was published by indie Latest York house Studio 96, and incorporates technology that may be scanned using an app to expand content, access giveaways and shop styles.

“There’s such a wealthy history, so many great images and great stories, but there was nobody place where all of that existed,” said Gill via a video interview from her home in London. “So I assume in a really selfish way we desired to create a book that we desired to read.”

The coffee-table tome has a number of photos and short sections on design and silhouette, collaborations, milestone moments, female-owned stores and moving into the longer term with sustainability and Web3, amongst other subjects.

Brands only really began to cater to women’s performance sneakers after the enactment of Title IX in 1972, which ensured equal access to sports in public schools. The book features ads for the Lady Waffle, which Nike introduced in 1977, and for the Lady Vans product line introduced in 1984.

“The Nineties is actually where sneaker design was becoming more of a viable profession path for ladies since the industry was booming,” said Gill, highlighting designer Stephanie Howard, who studied industrial design in college and joined Latest Balance as a designer in 1994, where certainly one of her earliest projects was the NB 850.

Howard went on to roles at Nike and Reebok, before cofounding NFT-meets-physical sneaker brand Endstate. “You see now once you go into design rooms, it still skews very heavily toward one gender, but there are more women undeniably than there have been when Stephanie Howard started off,” said Gill.

Sneaker fashion collaborations proceed to be an engine of growth and from the authors’ perspective, a few of the most notable have been engineered by women. Chitose Abe is one.

“What personally I discovered really interesting about her collaborations specifically was just how coveted they were across the sphere, by people of all genders. It wasn’t, we’re working with a female designer, and here’s like a small side run of ladies’s exclusives. The LDV Waffle was the Complex shoe of the 12 months in 2018. They were hyped by everyone they usually’re still very hard to get ahold of,” said Gill.

The book shares the story of how Abe got to that specific design with the layering and doubling down of a sole, which mirrors the hybridization technique that’s on the core of her fashion brand. “It’s such an ideal example of when collaborations really work they usually’re not done for collaboration’s sake,” said Gill.

Within the streetwear space, designer Melody Ehsani was groundbreaking for making a physical hub for female sneaker culture together with her brand store on Fairfax Avenue in L.A. — a street that otherwise has been very male-dominated with stores like Supreme, Huf, Diamond Supply Co. and The Tons of.

Ehsani designed early collaborations with Reebok, but her shoes for Nike Jordan have been probably the most hyped, namely her AJ 1 Fearless shoes, with rainbow colorblocking, watch face embellishment and handwritten messages.

“She’d had all these design meetings in Portland attempting to bring the shoe to life and nothing was clicking for the execs,” Gill recalled. “They told her in the event you don’t have something that works by end of the day, we’re calling it. And he or she created the shoe that we’ve all seen and love in eight hours. Ultimately once you have a look at that shoe, it’s a extremely personal expression of Melody’s identity and you may have the handwriting spelling out the mantra, ‘in the event you knew what you had was rare, you wouldn’t waste it.’”

Other sneaker design creatives, including Aleali May and June Ambrose, got here through the styling space.

May grew up as a fan of Jordans and was inspired by Maya Moore, the WNBA basketball player who became the primary female athlete to ink a cope with the brand. Together they designed the AJ1 Court Lux in 2018.

Ambrose, who has worked with Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige and Jay Z, made history joining Puma as creative director in 2020.

“There’s definitely quite a lot of women in great positions throughout the industry, but creative director is a title historically even at fashion houses that could be a man. When these appointments occur — they usually don’t occur enough — it creates visibility. Because you’ll be able to’t be what you’ll be able to’t see,” said Gill.

One other force driving female sneaker culture forward has been female athletes themselves. It wasn’t until 1995 that basketball player Sheryl Swoopes became the primary female athlete to have a signature athletic shoe, signing with Nike. “In 1999 was the primary women’s pro skate shoe, which was with Vans and Cara-Beth Burnside, so there have been some great moments within the ’90s however it was very slow to grow after that,” said Gill.

“We’re just now finally seeing women’s specific soccer cleats, which is insane since the National Women’s Soccer League is large, the Women’s Super League here in England is large,” she continued. “I used to be talking to certainly one of the designers who works at Ivy Park, she’d seen firsthand female athletes having to tape up their feet and stuff paper into male silhouettes to make them work….I can only hope with the success of the WNBA and sport becoming more of an actual equal-ish playing ground that brands can be forced to supply footwear that works for the feminine athlete.”

Celebrity is the last and perhaps the most important pillar of industry influence, despite the pitfalls that may include it, as seen recently over Kanye West being dropped by Adidas.

“Individuals are all the time going to be inspired by celebrities, they usually have such massive selling potential. The examples of Kanye, Beyoncé’s Ivy Park and Rihanna’s Fenty, when those partnerships were biggest was once they were on the pinnacles of their careers and will sell anything. However it is dependent upon the celebrity and the cosign. Sneaker consumers can see through the BS, and it needs to be something meaningful.”

What’s more interesting to Gill is the following gen of budding creatives collaborating with sneaker brands, corresponding to Joe Freshgoods, the artist and inventive director from Chicago whose “Performance Art” collection with Latest Balance has been successful.

“He wasn’t huge, but this collaboration has really elevated his profession,” she said. “We’ve seen the identical with Helen Kirkum, who was a designer at Adidas and has branched out into her own thing, as an independent designer specializing in sustainability,” Gill said of the British designer making bespoke sneakers collaged from waste.

“Yes, celebrities will all the time play a component within the industry, but what I like about sneaker culture is the way it democratized creativity and design. People love an excellent shoe and infrequently it doesn’t matter who’s designed it. And that may propel the careers of emerging creators as well.”