#which is back with another 10 sneaker drops to look forward to this week. Nike

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15+5+5 To Watch 111819

15 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 18

with Jacob Aere

 1.     Last Monday was Veteran’s Day, but sport’s support for military personnel continues throughout the month of November. Here’s one great example: Learfield IMG College’s ticket arm is working with 22 of its school partners to provide free football tickets for military personnel for the seventh straight season. The initiative, called “Seats for Service members,” will send 35,000 active duty or veteran military to a college football game this month as a way to honor their service. More than $500,000 in ticket donations have been collected across the country for the program. Penn State took it a step further by hosting personnel at the Bryce Jordan Center for a pre-game tailgate prior to their November 16 game against Indiana. With 8,000 expected to attend the tailgate, it was the largest of its kind in the Big Ten; Penn State followed that up with a decisive 34-27 win over the Hoosiers .

2. A draft agreement between Miami-Dade County and the Dolphins would "pay the team at least" $2.5 million a year for bringing a F1 race to Miami Gardens. According to the Miami Herald, the subsidy is "tied to an existing agreement" from 2014 that pays Hard Rock Stadium up to $5.75 million annually for big events. The drafted F1 agreement would "boost that cap" to $7 million, a 20% increase. However, Miami-Dade Deputy Mayor Jennifer Moon affirmed the Dolphins "dropped the request for the higher cap." Even without the higher cap, the proposed F1 agreement would make the 2014 agreement a "more reliable source of county revenue" for Dolphins Owner Stephen Ross. The Dolphins "already are allowed" a $1 million payment for the Miami Open tennis tournament. International soccer matches “qualify for a $750,000 payment, while a college football championship brings in $3 million. An annual F1 race would let Ross lock in another $2.5 million more for the yearly allocation allowed under the 2014 agreement.

3.   In a new poll commissioned by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, 77% of voters are for keeping the A's. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, building a privately financed ballpark at the Port of Oakland's Howard Terminal "got the support of 68% of the voters, even if it means setting up a special tax district to pay for infrastructure." The poll also shows that 44% of voters believe the city should “drop its lawsuit over the Coliseum land sale,” compared with 28% who support the lawsuit and 28% with no opinion on the matter." Analytics firm FM3 took a poll of 601 registered voters October 29-November 1 as part of the chamber's annual Pulse of Oakland survey. The poll, "which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%, came as the clock ticked down" on the deadline Major League Baseball set for the city to "drop the suit or risk the A's relocating to another city.” Since the city has lost the Warriors and soon, the Raiders, it’s not surprising that a majority of voters would back keeping its one remaining pro sports team.

4.   EverFi chants “Let’s Go Lightning.” Last Friday, the Tampa Bay Lightning invited 5,000 middle schoolers from the area to practice as part of their partnership with the Future Goals program from EverFi. The NHL and NHLPA are sponsoring the program that brings hockey into the classroom to explore STEM topics through sports. Future Goals features computer modules aimed at students in third through eighth grades on various topics. “We actually tried to use math and science in our ball hockey stuff,” Vice President of Community Hockey Development Jay Feaster shared with the Tampa Bay Times. “We show angles. If you pass off the boards here, or the different angles in the openings around a goalie.” While some of the students attending the Friday practice were hockey players, EverFi‘s NHL partnership recognizes that even those who don’t play the game have a better time absorbing STEM information through the lens of the sport.

 5.   Black News Channel, the brainchild of former football and political star J.C. Watts, has moved its launch date from November 15 to January 6. The Tallahassee, FL-based network co-founded by former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts and TV exec Bob Brillante made the date change to take advantage of new distribution platforms. “If we have the opportunity to include the largest African American audience possible from day one, then that should be our top priority,” said Watts. The network, which offers 24/7 news serving African American viewers, has carriage deals set with Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network, and will be available in TV markets including New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Watts entered the national conversation as a star quarterback for the University of Oklahoma in 1979 and later made a name for himself on Capitol Hill both as a congressman and a lobbyist backing diversity and economic issues still resonating in sports — and elsewhere — today.

6.   The Pac-12 has announced that the University of Washington and Tulane University will meet in 2020 in the sixth edition of the Pac-12 China Game presented by Alibaba Group. Federation of University Sports of China (FUSC), which operates under China’s Ministry of Education, will serve as the co-host for the game. “As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of our Pac-12 China Game and nearly a decade of the Pac-12 Global Initiative, we look forward to the continued relationship between the Conference and our China partners in welcoming Washington and Tulane in 2020,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott. “The tenet of our Pac-12 Global Initiative is that higher education and sports have the power to foster learning, understanding and togetherness between people and cultures. We’re proud to work with Alibaba and the FUSC in continued efforts to engage our universities and student-athletes in global experiences.” After last month’s NBA China debacle, it is critical that relations between China and the American sports community continue to positively evolve and strengthen.

7.   Japanese hoops star Rui Hachimura made history before ever stepping on an NBA court. The 6-foot-8 forward became the first player born in Japan to be drafted when the Washington Wizards selected him with the No. 9 overall pick in June. His popularity in Japan is unmatched, making him unique among this year's NBA rookie class. Because of Hachimura's status as a national icon in Japan, there was intense competition to land him as a sneaker endorser. Initially, seven companies presented to Hachimura, including such basketball staples as Nike subsidiary Jordan Brand and multiple China-based companies. Hachimura ultimately decided to sign with Jordan Brand, which offered a blend of proven performance products, marketing cachet around the world, and an opportunity to join a smaller stable of players within the larger Nike umbrella. Look for other major endorsements to come Hachimura’s way for brands eager to penetrate the style-forward Japanese market.

8.   Go Go Gopher. It is "too early to say" how the University of Minnesota's victory over Penn State last Saturday will affect prospective UM student applications, but the school’s PR director Jake Ricker told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that "all the attention the school has received...'can't hurt. UM is now 10-0 for the first time since 1904, and it is "generating an uptick in interest from fans wanting to buy products from the Minnesota Alumni Market." The Penn State victory also generated lots of social media buzz. The team's Twitter account saw 9.2 million impressions, 18,700 retweets, and 133,600 likes on Twitter in the ensuing week. For the entire month of September, the account had only "10.3 million impressions, 7,600 retweets, and 76,800 likes on Twitter." UM's athletic department also said that GopherSports.com "saw about 75% more visitors than the previous week" and the football "saw more than double the number of page views as the previous week." Any tangible long term results won’t be seen until admissions applications for 2020 start rolling in in December and donors open their wallets -- however, the Gophers’ loss to Iowa on Saturday might cause a few bandwagon would-be students to delete their online apps.

9.   WWE and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have announced that WrestleMania 35 generated $165.4 million in economic impact for the New York/New Jersey region last April, according to a study conducted by the Enigma Research Corporation. This marks a more than 60 percent increase from the $101.2 million generated for WrestleMania 29 in New York and New Jersey and the eighth consecutive year that WrestleMania generated more than $100 million in economic impact for its host region. Over the past 13 years, WrestleMania has now generated more than $1.3 billion in cumulative economic impact for the cities that have hosted the event. WrestleMania 35 also generated approximately $27.1 million in federal, state, and local taxes. A sold-out crowd of 82,265 fans from all 50 states and 68 countries attended WWE’s pop-culture extravaganza this past April, making it the highest-grossing entertainment event in the history of MetLife Stadium. Next year, WrestleMania 36 will take place Sunday, April 5, from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay and looks to positively impact a hurting sports industry in Tampa Bay.

 10. The Chiefs prepare to meet the Chargers in Mexico City — in Colorado. “This will be the third team now, so hopefully that's becoming a trend" -- Air Force athletics Chief Program Officer Nick Kiger, told the Colorado Springs Gazatte, about the Academy hosting the Chargers for practice this week ahead of their game next week against the Chiefs in Mexico City. The first meeting between the division rivals is this Monday night in Mexico City. The game will be played at Estadio Azteca which sits at an elevation of 7,200 feet above sea level, so Coach Anthony Lynn has been leading practices in Colorado Springs this week to prepare his players for the thin air. The NFL is expanding beyond the USA and into Europe and Mexico to try and create a global passion behind American football.

11. TB12, the retail arm of the Tom Brady brand, goes for deeper coverage. John Burns, CEO of TB12, spoke last week of the company's plans to double its retail outlets from two to four in 2020, with one more Massachusetts store in the works as well as another out of state. With a customer base of aging men and women concerned with living an active, pain-free lifestyle, Burns believes that the Patriot quarterback's personal story will prove more compelling than NFL team loyalty. TB12 currently has two retail outlets one at Patriot Place in Foxborough, the other, which opened in late August, on Boylston Street in the Back Bay. The stores sell apparel, workout gear, nutritional and dietary supplements, as well as one-on-one sessions with body coaches that are focused on performance, pliability, and recovery. Now that Brady has cemented his legacy on the NFL field, he looks to a life of success after football in business – looking perhaps to other legendary athletes such as Michael Jordan or Ronaldo as athlete business tycoon role models.

12. The National Women’s Hockey League announced that it had closed a new round of equity funding that ensures continued growth for the league for many years to come. According to Cynopsis, the financing was led by insurance and IT entrepreneur Andy Scurto, who now joins a group of more than 20 NWHL investors. The funding round is another boost for a league whose existence was in doubt after a tumultuous summer. According to Sports Business, the five-team, U.S. based NWHL is continuing to operate despite the fact that more than 200 of the world’s top female ice hockey players pledged to not compete in North America this season in an attempt to gain better pay and working conditions. The NWHL also recently signed a partnership with athlete marketing platform Opendorse in an attempt to increase its players’ presence and engagement on social media. If the players can have their salary wishes met, this league has a chance to become equally prominent to the NHL in 10 years’ time.

13. The shift is here: more fans are streaming sports than paying for TV packages. According to SportsPro, fans are watching more live sport on their smartphones and connected devices than they do on TV, despite the majority of sports media rights being held by linear broadcasters, according to new research by cloud video specialists Grabyo. While more than 50% of fans watch sport via a satellite or pay-TV subscription, Grabyo’s OTT Video Trends Report claims that more than 60% view sports content via either an OTT or premium social media service. Overall, Grabyo’s research found that the global market penetration of OTT services has hit 38%, with DAZN and Kayo Sports cited as the most popular dedicated sports streaming platforms used by fans. Furthermore, Grabyo links a growth in short-form video, real-time highlights, and viral video consumption with the widespread adoption of social media use on smartphones as social media platforms such as Facebook Watch, Twitter, and YouTube TV capitalize on a growing demand for streaming options.

14. ABC officially picked up the new competition series “Ultimate Surfer.” According to Laughing Place, the eight-episode series is set to feature up-and-coming surfers who train and live together as they battle it out at the World Surf League’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California, powered by Kelly Slater’s man-made wave technology, in the hope of competing amongst the best athletes in the world’s fastest-growing sport. Production will begin in 2020 and an airdate will be announced later this season. Slater will serve as on-air talent and special correspondent for the show. Alliances and rivalries will be front and center in “Ultimate Surfer” as men and women compete in individual and team challenges focused on specific surfing disciplines. Weekly eliminations will leave two men and two women as finalists who will vie for the male and female titles of the Ultimate Surfer and the opportunity to compete on the WSL World Tour, the pinnacle of professional surfing. Slater’s remarkable, one-of-a-kind, man-made wave – the most even playing field for measuring surf mastery – is at the heart of the series and provides him a boost as a brand while putting the fastest growing sport in the world in the spotlight.

 15. The Houston Rockets lose $20 million in sponsorship over general manager Daryl Morey’s political tweet. According to SportsPro, Morey’s actions last month caused a host of Chinese partners to end their deals with the NBA and its franchises, with the Rockets in particular feeling the pinch. ESPN reports the team has lost the most as a result of the spat with Chinese authorities, with the franchise seeing more than $7 million in revenue disappear this season as a result of canceled sponsorship agreements with Chinese firms and nearly $20 million overall with multi-year deals factored in. Tensions between Chinese companies and the NBA have continued, with little sign of a resolution. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly made it clear he will support Morey, despite calls for him to sack the 47-year-old. In addition, players are at risk of losing endorsement deals, including Rockets star James Harden, with ESPN reporting that Harden's endorsement agreement with Shanghai's SPD Bank Credit Card is under threat. Despite the off-court uncertainty, the Rockets have made a solid start to the season. Boasting a 9-3 record as of November 16, they sit second in the Western Conference behind the Los Angeles Lakers.

 Top Five Tech

Bleacher Report’s soccer property B/R Football debuts an interactive show on its YouTube channel. According to Digiday, the series is part of the sports publisher’s recent shift to produce more mid- and long-form programming for platforms like YouTube rather than shorter fare made for social platforms like Instagram. Called “Your Call,” the series will have viewers play the role of an up-and-coming soccer star, making choices such as which soccer team to join and what the size of his contract should be. Since YouTube does not have an official feature to enable interactive videos, B/R Football is using the video recommendations that appear at the end of videos to serve as the interactive elements. Each 45- to 60-second episode will end by presenting viewers with up to four choices. After people select a choice, that corresponding video will play. In total, the series spans 30 individual videos, and the full experience is expected to take eight to 10 minutes to complete. Since October 2018, B/R Football’s YouTube channel has grown from 235,000 subscribers and 10.8 million monthly views to 1 million subscribers and 21.5 million views in October, 2019 thanks to other Bleacher Report properties. Although YouTube is yet to have interactive experiences built into its platform, the B/R experiment may pan out to draw in its biggest new batch of fans to date for a Generation Z that is looking to be more involved with its favorite sports and teams.

The NHL’s Washington Capitals owners launch Caps Gaming Brand. Monumental Sports and Entertainment (MSE), the owners of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise, has launched an esports division called Caps Gaming, which will host a 32-team EA Sports NHL 20 competition. The Caps Gaming Showcase, a six-versus-six ice hockey esports tournament, which will launch on Xbox One, will feature an eight-week regular-season beginning in early December, with the top 16 teams advancing to a postseason stage held in late February, competing for a $15,000 prize pool. As part of Monumental’s gaming expansion, the esports division has also signed up professional NHL gamer John Casagranda, who is also known as “JohnWayne” and joins the Caps Gaming organization as an official streamer on the Caps Gaming Twitch channel until the end of June. In addition to being 2018 NHL Stanley Cup champions, Monumental owns and operates pro sports franchises based in the U.S. capital, including the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA champion Washington Mystics. By investing heavily in esports, MSE and the Capitals have kept themselves at the forefront of innovation across the NHL and are primed to cash-in on the rise of esports.

NASCAR fans who tweet about Kevin Harvick are awarded free Busch beer. According to Mobile Marketer, the reason Busch was offering free beer for a year to NASCAR fans who tweet about Harvick is due to the fact that Busch Beer sponsored Harvick’s #4 Ford car. The contest took place during the Monster Energy Cup Series finale on November 17 and whenever Harvick led the race, fans who posted tweets with hashtags #Busch4Harvick and #sweepstakes were entered for a chance to win the free beer and a limited-edition Busch can sporting Harvick's signature. Busch determined the number of winners by the final number of laps Harvick led in the NASCAR season finale race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The race is 400 miles long, giving Harvick multiple chances to lead and for Busch fans to win free beer. Busch's Twitter sweepstakes aimed to keep viewers glued to their TV and smartphone screens as the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series concluded. However, there's a bit of irony that Homestead was won by the #18 Toyota car driven by...Kyle Busch.

Advertising and patches in esports take root: Wizards District Gaming pen NBA 2K jersey patch deal with Alarm.com. According to SportsPro, the deal sees the Alarm.com also get virtual in-game signage during Wizards District Gaming play in the NBA 2K League, deepening its relationship with MSE, which also owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL's Washington Capitals. Alarm.com will also receive exposure during the NBA 2K League Draft, for which the Wizards’ esports team holds the number one overall pick this season. Further, the partnership features experiential activations, including a Wizards District Gaming sponsored employee program and players appearances, as well as social media features, branded content, digital banner advertisements on the team’s website, and brand integration within Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch. Esports is the perfect place for tech-oriented agencies to advertise to appeal to fans who are always looking to upgrade their digital devices and software.

Sports tech and analytics company Whoop raises $55 million for its discreet wearables. Whoop, which makes a sensor-equipped and screen-free strap that continuously tracks your activities 24/7 and then provides a multitude of performance metrics and other data based on that activity, has closed a round of $55 million funding that it will use to continue expanding its business into a wider range of wearables and analytics that can be gathered around them. According to TechCrunch, the devices measure things like how much strain a workout is causing you, how you are recovering afterwards, your sleep, whether training is having the desired effect, whether you are working at a level that will be less likely to cause injury, and how you are likely to perform. Looking ahead, the plan is to place the sensors into more environments than just the strap it currently makes. One notable shift Whoop has seen in the last year is that it has dropped the price of its wearable from a sizeable $500 down to free. Instead, it bundles the strap into a wider membership program that you do pay for, starting at $30/month and decreasing, depending on what you would like to measure and use the data for – and because it's simpler than Google’s recently-acquired Fitbit, Whoop may find more success by providing simplicity in an over-inundated tech world.

Power of Sports Five

John Cena confronts veteran suicide through charity.  Cena has partnered with the FitOps Foundation, a nonprofit committed to training and certifying veterans as personal trainers as the suicide rate among U.S. veterans continues to increase. According to Sports Illustrated, FitOps runs camps for its training sessions, providing a recognizable feeling for the veterans who attend. In addition to raising awareness about the needs of vets, Cena is also raising funds to expand the FitOps program. A number that really jumped out to Cena to inspire change was that roughly 20 veterans a day commit suicide. In a fundraising effort for FitOps, Cena pledged to match all donations up to $1 million through Veterans Day, as well as offer a VIP meet-and-greet with Cena to one lucky donor. Fittingly, on Veterans Day, the project crossed the $1 million threshold. An integral part of FitOps is rebuilding the sense of community and purpose that many veterans lose when returning to civilian life. While Cena has always showed his appreciation for the military, his current actions have him involved directly. 

Senegalese Minnesota Timberwolves center Gorgui Dieng gives back to his home country. According to CNN, the T-wolves center is a seven-year NBA veteran who signed a four-year $64 million contract extension with the team in 2016. With the help of Minnesota-based global health nonprofit MATTER, Dieng set up the Gorgui Dieng Foundation in 2015. The foundation provides aid to Senegal through four different methods: medical, food, agriculture, and athletics. Senegal is a country in which 29.6% of the 15.4 million population live in poverty, according to the World Health Organization. Last summer, Dieng sent 300,000 bags of intravenous fluid to Senegal and visited a neonatal hospital in Diamniadio that benefited from his organization's donations. He's helped send beds, dialysis machines, X-ray machines, and patient monitors for a new dialysis center to his hometown of Kébémer. In recognition of his work, Dieng became the third player to receive the Offseason NBA Cares Community Assist Award on November 8. Dieng and the Timberwolves have started the season at 7-6, and he will look to continue his efforts off the court when he isn’t busy playing in the NBA.

Indonsesian women are using surfing to change societal sexist attitudes. According to Reuters, few local women surf in the Southeast Asian archipelago of 17,000 islands, which has some of the world’s best beaches, dive, and surf spots, including Bali and Raja Ampat, attracting millions of visitors each year.  XX Surf is a surf school with a social mission on the island of Lombok seeking to empower girls through surfing while also tackling issues such as child marriage and teen pregnancy. Indonesia has the world’s eighth-highest number of child brides, according to the United Nations, with one in nine girls marrying before they turn 18 due to poverty and tradition. XX Surf was set up with a mission to change that. Enthusiasm is growing slowly in the country, with 17-year-old Kailani Johnson making history in May as the first Indonesian woman to compete in the pro World Surf League Women’s Championship Tour. XX Surf, donates a third of its profits to a local charity supporting girls’ education and hopes to inspire gender-equality change through sport, especially with surfing set to debut at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. 

The United Soccer League looks to launch a women's league rivaling NWSL and bring in USWNT players. According to Yahoo! Lifestyle, the United Soccer League is looking into starting a Division I women’s league by 2021. This comes two weeks after the NWSL introduced allocation money, though USWNT players would be kept out of the influx of cash. Some USL owners also own NWSL teams, and the league, which is the second tier in men’s professional soccer in the United States, announced earlier this month plans to include women in the USL Academy. The news is similar to what’s happening in the hockey world, where the National Women’s Hockey League is fighting to grow the sport while fighting other competing forces. With two competing leagues, it is likely that there may be more pressure to increase salaries for women in U.S. soccer leagues in order to have them play for one league over another. 

All-electric racing series Formula E sees BBC extension to include two races on FTA television. According to SportsPro, the Marrakesh ePrix on February 29 and the Rome ePrix on April 4 are the two races that have been chosen for the BBC’s television coverage, although it is not yet confirmed which channels will air the events. The extension will also see the BBC continue to show every Formula E race across its online platforms, including the BBC iPlayer and its website. Coverage of select races will also be available via the BBC red button. The expanded deal comes ahead of Formula E’s return to the UK, with a double-header race through London’s ExCel exhibition center and along the waterfront on the streets of the Royal Docks set to close the 2019/20 season on July 25-26. Formula E, which debuted on the BBC last season, will also be broadcast in the UK this season on Discovery-owned channel Eurosport, with select events also being shown live on free-to-air network Quest. This is an eco-friendly racing league that allows for the same excitement as non-electric racing with the benefit of no negative carbon emissions and could set an example for NASCAR in the U.S.

[isobelatntu]

How Sneaker Brands Finally Catered To Women In 2018

Via - Fashionista

At the beginning of the year, Nike released one of its biggest launches for women. The global sportswear brand gave 14 of its female employees the task of creating brand-new takes on some of its most iconic silhouettes, the Air Force 1 and Air Jordan 1. The collection, called Nike 1 Reimagined, boasted a total of 10 styles and upon its release, the first drop sold out. This winter, Nike released a mid-calf boot version of its Air Force 1 Sage, and has plans to expand on Reimagined with more silhouettes in 2019.

During Paris Fashion Week in February, the company also premiered Unlaced, an online destination and physical store concept specifically for women that offers expanded or unisex sizes, exclusive styles and fashion-forward collaborations, with designers and curators like Ambush's Yoon Ahn, Martine Rose, Sarah Andelman and i-D's Julia Sarr-Jamois.

Reimagined and Unlaced were among Nike's many recent efforts in response to female fans voicing what's wrong with the sneaker industry for years.

Nike's subsidiaries are also ramping up their women's offerings this year: Converse used its classic Chuck and One Star sneakers as a blank canvas for special collaborations that tap into music (Miley Cyrus), fashion (Chiara Ferragni) and subculture (New York-based design label MadeMe). Though the Jordan brand has offered sneakers exclusively for women in the past — Vashtie Kola in 2010 and Aleali May in 2017 — this year marks the official launch of its women's category.

Indeed, the Fall 2018 runways of Paris Fashion Week were proof that high-end labels collectively jumped on the sneaker-trend bandwagon. "Now it's the norm for designers to have a sneaker, whether that will stick, we'll see," says Footwear News Fashion Editor Shannon Adducci, who's already seeing a dip in the trend for 2019. "But the point is, women are wearing sneakers. They're not going to stop wearing sneakers."

As far as marketing for these women's-focused initiatives, brands like Adidas, Puma and Reebok have heavily relied on a roster of influencer and celebrity ambassadors. Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne are spokesmodels for various Puma campaigns during 2018, while Adidas has tapped into its Kardashian-Jenner network — Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Hailey Baldwin — to promote the Arkyn and Falcon sneakers, as well as its fashion collaborations with up-and-coming designers Daniëlle Cathari and Olivia Oblanc.

Longtime partner, Gigi Hadid, will release her co-designed capsule collection with Reebok, including the model's own take on the Freestyle Hi sneaker and the newly-relaunched Aztrek. In November, the company also took on Cardi B as an ambassador, along with her personal cosign on its Aztrek. 

Reebok also expanded its focus on women through content. In June, the brand released its first-ever podcast miniseries, "Flipping the Game," which featured three episodes covering how female sneakerheads are demanding more and breaking barriers within sneaker culture. 

Other media platforms have also popped up throughout the year to highlight female sneaker enthusiasts. Since its launch in May, Teen Vogue's Instagram account Her Platform (@platform) has acquired around 33.3K followers who keep up with its prolific feed of of stylish, sneaker-wearing individuals and original photo shoots. Zappos supplements its women's shop-in-shop of classic sneakers The Ones, which launched at the beginning of 2018, with an Instagram account @The_ONES and a blog called The Stories.

Of course, it's great to see such a huge push at one time towards women's sneaker needs, but why now? "2018 has clearly been a year for women across all industries and aspects, so it's naturally trickled down into the footwear industry," says Ashley Haines, a former Hypebae editor who now works on Foot Locker's global corporate communications and PR team.

Was it enough? While Haines says she's optimistic for the future for the first time ever, there's a still a long way to go within the industry.

"Brands have just started to actually move the needle to cater to the female consumer within the last few years. Just thinking in terms of major collaborations, Vashtie was the first woman to design her own Jordan in 2010 and Aleali was the second in 2017. Seven entire years later," says Haines. "And it's not like the demand or interest from women was not there for nearly a decade. I can assure you as both a sneaker lover and an editor that there was. In part, Hypebae was created as a platform to prove that there was, and to celebrate the female sneakerhead after being overlooked for so long."

Nike's M2K Tekno sneaker, a largely successful release that debuted during John Elliott's Fall 2018 runway show, was initially released for women that later expanded into men's due to high demand. Another example is Nike's Lebron 16 for women in collaboration with Harlem Fashion Row and designed by four Black women. "That was a great example of a men's sneaker as a performance shoe with added feminine elements, as opposed to shrinking it and pinking it," says Brittany Edwards, co-founder of Incorpherated, a network that aims for inclusion throughout male-dominated industries.

"It also comes back down to who [these sneaker brands] are hiring. The amount of women working at these corporations in a producing role is really slim — and on top of that, the minorities that they employ, even men included," adds Edwards. "But if you look at the culture that helped propagate the fashion, styles and trends that these companies are influenced by and directly influencing, there's a major gap between those communities. That's a bigger issue. It does come down to an access and employment issue and the gap that exists."

In order to empower young girls and professionals to aspire to work for the sneaker industry, both Edwards and co-founder Khiana Lowe host a series of "Straight to Feet" events and panels that bring together women who work across fashion, media and more. In November, Incorpherated partnered with Adidas to host students from New York City to workshop with female sneaker designers and recreate their own Stan Smiths, and on Dec. 8, they'll be holding speaker sessions on sustainability in fashion and digital marketing.

"We wanted to bring together a community of women to showcase their work, as well as create an experience for students to be engaged by these women doing these awesome things and opportunities that are available to them," says Edwards.

The two also make sure that their events are inclusive towards men, since they want them to be a part of the conversation, too. "A lot of times, we just don't want a women's only release," says Lowe. "Similarly to having these conversations, it can't just be women in the sneaker industry just among women. We want to be included in the full world."

[dippedanddripped]

Every great label lives in the shadow of its founder. At Dior’s most recent menswear show, presented in the barracks of Paris’ horseback cavalry, la Garde républicaine, that fact is writ large. Kim Jones, the newly minted menswear artistic director of the fashion house, commissioned artist Brian Donnelly — better known as KAWS — to lend his street art stylings to Dior for the season. One of KAWS’ contributions is a 10-meter tall floral statue of the house’s founder, Christian Dior.

Comprising 70,000 flowers in vibrant pink, crisp white, and stark black, it is the artist’s rendition of Mr. Dior as filtered through KAWS’ “BFF” character, a furry, four-fingered, Muppet-esque figure with a button nose and Xs for pupils. In his hand, he holds a white perfume bottle in the shape of Mr. Dior’s dog, Bobby — a reference to a limited-edition Miss Dior perfume bottle from 1952. And here, in the shadow of Mr. Dior and his Bobby bottle, Jones is about to establish a new era at Dior Men’s.

Born in London in 1979, Jones experienced a life of constant travel from an early age. His father was a hydrogeologist who brought the family along to far-flung locales such as Tanzania, Kenya, Ecuador, and the Amazon — with brief periods of respite in London in between. The designer still considers Africa his second home, and Jones recalls that it was in Botswana where he saw the first garment he ever loved: a T-shirt bearing the photo of a lion.

At 14, he considered following in his father’s footsteps in zoology or conservation, but thanks to an adolescence spent obsessing over his sister’s treasure trove of fashion magazines, he switched toward something in the nebulous field where culture and creativity intersect. His collector’s instinct started to manifest back then, too, with the young Jones collecting vintage Levi’s pieces and getting exposed to London’s bustling subcultural scene, discovering designers such as Vivienne Westwood along the way. Today, Jones’ collection spans an impressive archive of ’80s London clubwear from designers and brands including Westwood, Rachel Auburn, Stephen Linard, and Modern Classics.

In addition to pieces from Issey Miyake, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Christopher Nemeth, he once confessed in a 2016 interview with Designboom that he owns more than 500 sneakers, many of which are Nike models such as the Air Huarache and Air Jordans.

Jones and his friends had trouble finding clothing they liked, so took a DIY approach in the vein of the punk movement spearheaded by Malcolm McLaren and Westwood. He took these designs to Louise Wilson, the late head of fashion at prestigious art school Central Saint Martins, who offered him a place in the program. At the same time, Jones had been offered his first job in the industry by Michael Kopelman, an early member of the International Stüssy Tribe and founder of streetwear distributor Gimme Five. Jones’ earliest duties involved unpacking boxes of Supreme gear among others for distribution to some of London’s most prescient stores. One such place was The Hideout, an ahead-of- its-time boutique run by Kopelman and Fraser Cooke, who currently oversees Nike’s buzziest collaborations and is responsible for bringing the likes of UNDERCOVER’s Jun Takahashi and Jones himself under the Swoosh’s fashion-forward umbrella.

But before that, Jones was already generating buzz with his graduate collection in 2002. It caught the eye of designer John Galliano, who bought half of the collection. A year later, Jones made his debut at London Fashion Week, selling a prized Vivienne Westwood parachute shirt on eBay to fund the collection. Even then, Jones’ penchant for integrating sportswear and subculture into his clothes shone through, mining ’90s youth culture and rave festivals for inspiration.

Dior / Archive / Sophie Carre

These influences were manifested in cropped Peruvian stripe bomber jackets, ombré-dyed denim, and collared bombers with a tribal print motif. His penchant for rip-and-repair garments resulted in bicolor trousers in contrasting pink pastel tones and deep purple hues, patchwork pants, and material-blocked dropped-crotch nylon track pants styled with Nike Terminator high-tops.

He established codes that mixed what was happening in streetwear with runway-worthy garments, catching the eye of Uniqlo, Hugo Boss, Topshop, and Umbro. With the latter he designed a capsule collection for several seasons until 2007 and worked on a 2005 football jersey collaboration with Supreme. In 2008, he was appointed creative director of storied British tailoring house Dunhill, revitalizing the label’s menswear with a worldly, casual universe of clothes. Zippers replaced button closures, humble coach jackets were elevated with premium fabrics, and sportcoats were reinterpreted into garments resembling Japanese kimonos. Three years into his tenure, he departed for Louis Vuitton.

His seven-year career at Vuitton took a house predominantly known for its status-symbol accessories and made it a formidable player in the menswear space. Jones’ peripatetic design codes aligned perfectly with a fashion house that already appealed to the jet set. He introduced a line of premium fleece pieces in Fall/Winter 2014 that melded Patagonia staples with high-end branded hardware. In Fall/Winter 2015, he revisited the work of one of his favorite designers, Christopher Nemeth, who moved from London to Tokyo in 1986 and died aged 51 in 2010, creating a line of covetable pieces utilizing Nemeth’s signature artistic prints. Jones revered the late Nemeth’s prescience in melding Savile Row with street-ready silhouettes — and it’s a torch he seems to have picked up.

No collection signified that more than Fall/Winter 2017, which saw an unprecedented collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Supreme. To some, it signified the death knell of streetwear, but for Jones, it was a natural progression for two labels that have come to represent two sides of the same coin — creating products that are coveted the world over, yet remain inaccessible to all but a select, extremely lucky few (and those with enough cash to fork over the exorbitant asking price).

“You wear clothes in the street, so everything’s streetwear. You can wear a couture gown down the street and that turns it into streetwear.”

“I get so bored of that term ‘streetwear,’” says Jones. Right now he’s backstage at the Summer 2019 Dior Men’s show, walking through the collection and examining the final looks before they’re revealed to the world on the runway. “You wear clothes in the street, so everything’s streetwear. You can wear a couture gown down the street and that turns it into streetwear.”

Indeed, perhaps the term “streetwear” is redundant. Jones brings up one of his favorite designers today, Jun Takahashi of UNDERCOVER, as an example. Takahashi’s acclaimed label often toes the line between punk-infused rip-and-repair garments and graphic-driven pieces with a subversive bent. Earlier in the week, Takahashi held his first-ever menswear fashion show, which Jones attended. The two are friends and share a mutual admiration.

“His work is fashion. I think it’s wrong to put that in the bracket of ‘streetwear’ — it’s just good design,” says Jones. “It’s 2018. You’ve got to be realistic about what people wear.”

Jones’ realistic approach to the commercial side of Dior’s menswear balances out with a new universe he’s establishing in this first season. First off, he’s renamed the label from “Dior Homme” to the simpler “Dior Men’s.” Dior Homme’s previous designers, Hedi Slimane and Kris Van Assche, left a legacy of predominantly noirish clothes with a dark, somewhat gothic edge. Jones has rewritten the rules with his first collection, equal parts inspired by Mr. Dior’s love of nature and flora and a desire to blend the worlds of Dior’s womenswear and menswear.

“Each house I work with, I use different codes and DNA,” he says. “Dior is a tailoring brand, essentially, and we want to be very chic.” Of course, to Jones, “tailoring” means much more than traditional suiting. Plenty of the pieces in his debut collection utilize precious materials and techniques to give classic sportswear garments like bomber jackets, topcoats, and T-shirts a decidedly more artisanal (and slightly femme) look and feel. The Dior Homme logo has been replaced with an older design, a sleeker all-caps “DIOR” that also appears on its womenswear, further cementing the connection between Jones’ line and the women’s collections designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri.

“There’s something utilitarian about Dior,” he says. “It’s a little bit romantic I guess, but in a very sporty way.”

Jones takes an archival suit silhouette pairing a double-breasted jacket and voluminous trousers and renders them in a muted pink, referencing Mr. Dior’s childhood home, and another in a bright yellow. This color, and other garments with gold flecks on them, are a sly nod to French poet Jean Cocteau, who once described Christian Dior as an “agile genius of our times whose magical name contains ‘dieu’ and ‘or,’” the word “dieu” meaning “god” and “or” meaning “gold.”

One of the recurring motifs is the toile de jouy pattern designed by Victor Grandpierre in 1947 for the original Dior boutique, repurposed as embroidery and jacquard on shorts, sheer tops, and a technical organza used as a layer on a bomber jacket emblazoned with embroidered bees of KAWS’ design. It’s one of the artist’s many reinterpretations of the house’s codes in the collection, and like most of Jones’ collection, will demand a significant price.

Jones is a designer who makes fashion with a capital “F” and Dior is a house that specializes in luxury with a capital “L.” Both words mean something different than they did two years ago. In an era of waning dress codes and upscale casual clothing, a product’s price tag is tied more to its provenance, earned through years of making consistently good product — or to its hype, where the rabid demand far outweighs the scarce supply. Fashion and luxury are malleable terms that can be applied as much to a covetable sneaker (of which there are many in Dior’s latest collection) as to a denim trucker jacket embroidered with KAWS for Dior bees.

“There’s something utilitarian about Dior… It’s a little bit romantic I guess, but in a very sporty way.”

“Today, via the internet and Instagram, people adhere to brands, not only by products, but also by the values of culture and know-how,” Dior chief executive Pietro Beccari told French newspaper Le Figaro in June. “They want to hear beautiful stories. The Dior house has a lot to tell.”

It’s appropriate that Jones is at the forefront of LVMH’s golden goose — The New York Times reported in 2017 that Dior holds 41 percent of the share capital and 56.8 percent of the voting rights within the conglomerate. Beccari, like Jones, is a realist about the way people dress today. It’s possible to make sportswear as desirable and elegant as an expensive, one-of-a-kind couture creation, and if you can make the right emotional connection with a potential client, they’ll gladly pay the asking price.

What Jones brings to the table is an ability to meld the impulsive part of the lizard brain, the part that covets new products, with the elevated execution of a designer who knows how to rework the existing codes of a fashion house. If streetwear is a movement built largely on placing high fashion in a different, more accessible context, Jones is able to take that energy to an esteemed house like Dior without having to compromise on quality or worry about things like price points. It has also afforded him the opportunity to bring some friends along the way. Streetwear, after all, was a bustling community of like-minded creatives before it was an industry.

“You want to work with people you like,” says Jones. “I got Matthew Williams to design the buckles for me because I really love his brand. I’ve got Yoon [Ahn] working with me also, and I commissioned KAWS to design the bee.”

KAWS and Jones have been on each other’s radar for quite some time, and both also work with Nike on sought-after collaborations. The two had been in touch prior to Jones’ appointment at Dior, and when it came to Jones’ debut show, he couldn’t think of a better person to help make a statement.

“I’ve always wanted to work with KAWS,” says Jones. “I think it’s nice that he’s the first person I’d work with at Dior because I love his work. For me, for the generation that’s coming up now, he’s the most important artist in the world.”

Before KAWS built the statue for the show (and a smaller rendition that lives in Dior’s showroom), the artist was commissioned to design plush “BFF” toys decked out in Dior Baby clothing, a sub-line KAWS didn’t even know existed. On Jones’ Instagram in the days leading up to the show, he posted a plethora of celebrities, including A$AP Rocky, Kate Moss, and even Louis Vuitton’s new men’s artistic director Virgil Abloh, posing with the two stuffed toys.

KAWS admits he was initially hesitant to move forward with the sculpture, as art world timelines are much more forgiving than those in fashion, and was impressed that Dior could pull together such a massive undertaking in a matter of months. In addition to the Dior bee motif, KAWS also remade the Dior logo in his own style, and a variety of his works show up again in the accessories collection, spearheaded by designer Yoon Ahn of cult Japanese jewelry label AMBUSH.

Ahn’s approach to the accessories line is complementary to the cavalcade of colors in Jones’ collection. KAWS’ bee and Mr. Dior BFF reappear as studded pendants and high-end keychains. Chunky, iridescent letters refashioned into rings spell out “DIOR,” and there are even plush keychains depicting Mr. Dior’s dog Bobby tie-dyed in psychedelic colors. Tying into Jones’ desire to bring more elements of womenswear into the collection, this is the first season that Dior’s best-selling saddle bag has been recontextualized into the men’s offering, appearing as soft leather side bags, pouches, backpacks, and other elegant luggage pieces.

/ Milan Vukmirovic

“You want to work with people you like… I got Matthew Williams to design the buckles for me because I really love his brand. I’ve got Yoon [Ahn] working with me also, and I commissioned KAWS to design the bee.”

Notably, many of the new bags, belts, and even baseball caps feature custom buckles designed by Matthew Williams of 1019 ALYX 9SM, a nascent label known for its Rollercoaster belts inspired by chunky, tactical quick-release COBRA buckles.

“Kim and I had been friends a long time, and he was somebody that really mentored me and motivated me to start my own brand,” says Williams.

After Williams’ first season, he gifted Jones one of his backpacks featuring 1019 ALYX 9SM’s custom buckles, and Jones loved it. For Dior, Williams has designed several buckles that meld the utilitarian appeal of the originals with the elevated branding of Dior. In one instance, he turns Christian Dior’s “C” and “D” initials into an interlocking buckle. It features on a baseball cap that London grime artist Skepta wore to the show.

“He gave me, like, two months to make these buckles, and I just pulled it together for him,” Williams says.

Jones might define streetwear merely as clothes people wear on the street, but his approach to Dior Men’s has much more in common with the mindset of the culture’s progenitors. He’s designing clothing for people with a specific mindset, and he’s tapped some of his high-profile creative friends to fashion covetable products they might not have been able to create on their own.

“The visibility of a lot of the people that started off more modestly in streetwear has changed,” says KAWS. “The world has definitely noticed and things just keep growing. But what’s unique about a company like Dior is the craftsmanship. I was blown away at the speed at which things can be made and the integrity put into them. That’s not common.”

The shift in consumer desire and what cultivates a passion for product is not lost on Jones. He’s fully aware of the dichotomy of balancing a consistent vision for a brand with creating new commercial hits season after season. That’s why introducing the saddle bag for men alongside several new sneaker silhouettes is telling. After all, more and more men (and women) have been sporting fanny packs and waist bags from streetwear brands and luxury labels alike.

“It’s more than menswear… People want to buy clothes that they can wear all the time.”

Sneakers have become a status symbol for men and women, so it’s not far-fetched to think Jones sees a future in which a Dior purse gets a second life as a must-have men’s accessory, especially when it has a Williams-designed buckle. “It” brands and “it” products ebb and flow season after season, but pieces like that have the potential to become longtime grails.

“It’s more than menswear,” as Jones puts it. “People want to buy clothes that they can wear all the time.”

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