New Nike Book Spotlights Women’s Sportswear Through the Years
Nike has been shining a spotlight on women over the last several years and its latest project is a continuation of that mission.
The sports brand has teamed with Phaidon Press on the first book to offer a visual history of women’s sportswear and Nike’s place in the business over the past 50-plus years.
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Titled “Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good: Nike Apparel,” the coffee table tome written by Maisie Skidmore is over 350 pages and features 575 illustrations. As she writes in the introduction: “Women’s apparel has not always been a priority for the sporting goods industry. But where sport happens, there Nike is — and there women have always been. What’s more, they’ve always been wearing something.”
Skidmore set out to explore that topic through five chapters that offer deep dives on different essential apparel pieces: warm-ups, jerseys, leggings, sports bras and shorts. Where We Play, which tackles the topic of sports apparel beyond the field; Fit Check, which examines the power of color and beauty in competition; The Body: Seen which speaks to the female form; The Body: Owned, which moves beyond physical appearance to take on the topic of what empowers a woman, and Adapt and Evolve, which chronicles the history of women’s sporting apparel over the years.
Each chapter features interviews with Nike-sponsored athletes, trainers and other collaborators including Sha’Carri Richardson, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Caster Semenya, Joan Benoit Samuelson, Dina Asher-Smith, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, Scout Bassett, and Naomi Osaka who tell personal stories about everything from the power of red lipstick to the modification of leggings to fit a prosthetic leg.
To introduce the book, which was released on Tuesday, Nike hosted a panel discussion at its New York headquarters with the author as well as track-and-field athlete Anna Cockrell and Nike creative director Johanna Schneider.
Cockrell, a 27-year-old hurdler and sprinter, related how seeing Serena Williams blend sports and streetwear by wearing a Nike denim miniskirt at the 2004 U.S. Open “fundamentally changed my brain chemistry.” The athlete, who won a silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2024 Paris Olympics, said that while she wouldn’t wear a miniskirt to the track, she admired “the audacity of it. Tennis is very traditional and there was the willingness and the bravery to lean in to your own style.”
Cockrell described how her style has evolved since the days when she was told what to wear to match her teammates at USC until she signed her pro deal with Nike two years ago. “The world opened up,” she said, adding that she could now choose the best sports bra, leggings and sneakers to fit her body and her training. “Transitioning to a pro athlete was integral to that.”
As a track-and-field athlete, the sports bra is perhaps the most important piece of her wardrobe, she said. She tests every option Nike has to find the ones that allow her to perform the best, and her style of choice is traditional rather than “longlines” that cover the ribs and impact her breathing.
When competing, she said, her jewelry is also paramount to her performance. She wears earrings that belonged to her late grandmother, a necklace from her parents that was intended to keep her from getting a tattoo of the Olympic rings — it worked! — and rings from her boyfriend and sister. These talismans help give her the confidence to perform because “all the people I love and that love me are with me.”
Looking feminine is also important to the athlete. Cockrell said that because she’s 5-feet 10-inches and muscular, she has been mistaken for a man. When she was younger, this would upset her, so she opted for tight, skinny jeans and a lot of hair. But now she’s more comfortable in her own skin and shrugs off any mistakes about her gender. “I’m a baggy jeans girl now and I’m OK with that,” she said.
Skidmore said that she opted to focus on women’s sportswear for the book because her hope was to “give some space to women’s clothing. It doesn’t necessarily get the airtime that it needs and it was an amazing opportunity to give it that room. These are the garments that we become so intimate with — we live in them, we do grocery shopping in them, we run around the park in them. I was so interested in getting into the nitty gritty of our relationship with those clothes because they’re such a universal expression of style.”
So is there a sequel in her future? “Maybe there will be a shoe book someday,” she said with a smile.
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