From Japan With Love

I am lucky enough to know people who consider my project even when on holidays. My classmate recently returned to Japan over the mid semester break and took some photos of some amazing bubblegum coloured sneakers, in what I can only imagine is one of numerous sneaker stores in Japan. Seeing pictures like these, even if the sneakers themselves don’t appeal to me, really make me envy places like Japan and Hong Kong.

It just seems like in comparison that our market is tiny, at least in Melbourne anyway. There are ranges of colour ways for vans silhouettes that I didn’t even realise existed and from what I have seen these are for women only too, imagine the rest!
Despite the numerous colour-ways that I have never seen they still conform to that notion that girls want pale, shiny, and often pink shoes. In some cases they put all stereotypes into one shoe, making them shiny, pastel and featuring pink. Even if these are the shoes I advocate against there is apparently a larger range of choice overseas in comparison to what I have seen in the sneaker stores here.










There is simply more variety, but the problem still remains the same. These shoes have been labelled as women’s sneakers rather than sneakers to be worn by both sexes. Even outside of western culture the stereotypes remain, there is a limited scope for women in sneaker culture when it comes to choice. It is confining and designs appear far more repeated when the colour palette the designers have to choose from are pastel, silver, white or various shades of pink.
It is no surprise then when particular women who are sneaker enthusiasts will tread on the dark side and explore what colours the boys get to choose from. It is there that you can see the designers have far more range and freedom and can be a little more experimental.

Ideally I would like for the labels to be removed completely but that is impossible, instead a compromise should be reached. A compromise that allows the same decisions and considerations taken when designing male sneakers to be made on the female sneakers, rather than repeating the tried and true stereotypes that have been pushed on our culture. Women should not feel judged when eyeing the mens designs, and the marketing departments of these brands shouldn’t push so hard to make this distinction between gender so large.