The Lady Foot Locker in Niles, Ohio, was the first place I saw a women’s basketball shoe. My mom and I had driven 30 minutes to a mall to do some shopping, and there they were: Sheryl Swoopes’ Nike Air Swoopes 1 in all its glory. The shoe was the first of its kind. It was 1995, a moment I’ll never forget.
For years, men’s basketball shoes have dominated the conversation and the market. But times have changed, with new sneaker designs and colorways from signature women’s shoes have ushered in a new era.
I saw a woman in bright pink A’ja Wilson A’Ones at a coffee shop recently. One of my guy friends showed me the Sabrina Ionescu Sabrina 2s he keeps in his car in case a run breaks out.
“We’ve always had women who were good enough, marketable enough, and had fans who wanted to support them. We just didn’t always get the investment,” said South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, who had her own signature shoe, the Nike Zoom S5, in 1999.
“Now companies are seeing what we’ve known: Invest in women, and women will deliver. And I want more. We shouldn’t be counting how many women have signature shoes. There should be so many that we lose count.”
It’s a major stepping stone in an athlete’s career to get a signature shoe. And for the first time in history, some of the most popular basketball shoes are women’s. When the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries take the court in this year’s WNBA Finals, Dream star Angel Reese will wear her own Reebok Angel Reese 1.
Despite my deep love of sneakers and women’s basketball, I realized I had no real knowledge of how we got here. I just knew that as a young girl, I never would’ve imagined a time when multiple women’s basketball players would not only have signature shoes, but be at or near the top of the market.
Whether you call them sneakers, gym shoes or tennis shoes, sneaker culture has been closely connected and important to hoops. Historically, women basketball players didn’t have performance shoes specifically designed for them and wore men’s shoes because they were the only ones available.
But with the Swoopes signature shoe, the game changed.
In 1995, Swoopes, who holds the record for most points scored (47) in an NCAA Division I championship game (set playing for Texas Tech in 1993), became the first woman with a signature shoe.
“It reinforced that women athletes deserved products built around them and their game, and it helped elevate the visibility of women’s basketball and the athletes leading it,” said Karie Conner, vice president and general manager of the global Nike basketball business. “Her signature shoe was an important milestone, not just for Nike, but for women’s basketball.”
Earlier in ’95, Rebecca Lobo and the UConn women’s team completed a perfect season on their way to a national championship, and she was named the national player of the year. Lobo skipped her college graduation to try out for the U.S. national team, and just before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, she signed with Reebok.
Swoopes, Lobo and Team USA won gold. The following year, Swoopes was drafted by the Houston Comets and helped the franchise win four WNBA championships. The Reebok Lobo, the brand’s entry into the women’s basketball shoe game, debuted during that season.
Top players such as Staley, Lisa Leslie, Cynthia Cooper, Chamique Holdsclaw and Diana Taurasi all joined Nike in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. Two-time Olympic gold medalist Nikki McCray became the first WNBA player to sign with Fila.
“I don’t know if I really understood how big it was at the time,” Staley said. “You’re talking about a Black girl from North Philly getting her own shoe. That didn’t happen.”
Five years passed between Taurasi’s signature shoe and the launch of Candace Parker’s “Ace” line with Adidas in 2010. The next signature from a WNBA athlete didn’t come until Breanna Stewart signed a multiyear endorsement deal with Puma in 2021, making her just the 10th signature athlete in the WNBA.
Fortunately, there wasn’t another two-decade wait. Elena Delle Donne (Nike), Ionescu (Nike), Wilson (Nike), Reese (Reebok) and Caitlin Clark (Nike) all have inked signature deals.
The day I never expected is here.
According to Conner, more than 70 WNBA players and 175 NBA players wear Wilson’s or Ionescu’s signature footwear.
“Shoes by players like Angel Reese, A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu aren’t just being worn by women and girls; they’ve got a wide audience,” said Travonne Edwards, a senior cultural partnerships strategist at JD Sports.
One of the reasons for the popularity is the price point. Adult sizes for women’s signature models range from $110 to $160. Men’s signature models can be more than $200 depending on the player, brand and model.
Brands are engaging with women athletes on a level we’ve never seen before, and their popularity isn’t just marked by inspiring other women and girls. Everything marketed toward women isn’t just pink anymore, either. (Though, it’s OK to like pink!) Performance shoes sold as women’s and girls’ were previously re-colored men’s shoes, and ones made specifically for women didn’t have the extended sizing needed for someone taller.
“It’s gone from women being an afterthought to women being the blueprint. A signature shoe now has to perform on court, but it also has to exist in culture,” Jide Osifeso, Reebok’s head of basketball, said. “The women’s game has grown to a space where there’s enough people who look to female athletes as admired figures on a mass scale — enough for brands to really have to look to engage with and embrace in a real substantive way.
“The athlete isn’t simply putting her name on a shoe; she’s helping define what the shoe brand means to that game regardless of gender. That shift is powerful, because finally the product is being designed around the woman rather than asking the woman to adapt to the product.”
With the Air Swoopes, the player herself was involved with the design every step of the way. An early edition of Swoopes’ signature shoe featured a loop to help a woman with longer nails pull her shoes on without one breaking. Swoopes wasn’t only a generational basketball talent, but there was identity right in the shoe. A stylish wink to those who could relate.
“A signature collection, from footwear to apparel, is one of the most personal expressions of an athlete’s identity. It brings together their journey, values and approach to the game in a way that people can see and experience,” Conner said.
“It’s an opportunity to share their story with the world. For young athletes especially, that connection can be powerful.”
Each shoe design tells a story. From the colorways that depict a player’s favorite cartoon character, a tribute to a former coach or one’s child, and a sweet collaboration with a brand that shares a player’s name, signature athletes’ stories are intertwined with each lace.
“It’s incredibly important for women to have representation through sneakers. We want regular sneakers, not secondary versions,” said Jazerai Allen-Lord, a shoe collector and owner of a marketing agency that works with sneaker brands.
In previous years, players in both the NBA and WNBA would debut new shoes for special occasions — think NBA Christmas and All-Star games. Wilson, Reese and Clark have all debuted new colorways at various points during the regular season. Every day is Christmas.
The rise of women’s basketball footwear reflects the influence of the athletes themselves. As the game continues to grow, so does their impact on the sport and culture.
“Women’s basketball finally has the visibility and cultural momentum to match the talent that was already there,” Osifeso said. “The players are becoming cultural figures and characters with unique personal identities, not just female athletes.
“People are buying into women’s basketball shoes because the product, and the women wearing them, feel culturally alive.”
Through the 1980s and into the ’90s, maybe even the early 2000s to an extent, the top dog in the hoops sneaker market, or even to wear off the court, was a current signature basketball shoe. That was sort of the pinnacle, and then once retros happened … somewhere along the line, the signature shoe lost some sort of cachet as a street shoe. I wonder if the women’s signature shoe has kind of flipped it on its head a little bit.
When a shoe is “retro’d,” it means a brand makes a newly manufactured version of an older, classic shoe. Retro shoes have dominated the sneaker market for some time, and there is belief if the emphasis on retros impacted the creativity in designing new gym shoes.
“Wearing an A’ja, a Stewie, a Sabrina, an Angel turns heads a little bit. Because who is the Jordan 41 for?” Russ Bengtson, former editor-in-chief of SLAM magazine and longtime sneaker editor at Complex said, referring to the Jordan brand court performance shoe.
“It’s all about whatever the next shoe is, and I think that’s something that’s been missing in men’s shoes for a while because of retro. And I think that’s something that makes women’s signatures refreshing, because it’s going back to that feeling of, like, ‘Yo, OK, what’s next? What’s the next one going to be like?’”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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