Like Patchwork

The act of quilting and making patchwork decorations has belonged to the female domestic sphere for centuries. It was made widely popular during the Victorian era when it was the females role to beautify the home.

Lavish decorations were essential in the parlour and it was the woman’s job to buy and accommodate the home for her husband, as well as to aid in her social life. The separation of spheres was important in determining the different tastes that occurred between men and women, according to the experts of the time. It was suggested that a woman’s taste was less than a mens, in fact their taste was often insulted at great length by men. Their lavishly decorated parlous and patchwork tapestries created were believed to hold the design standards.

With the numerous years that have passed since that point in time, you would have thought that the separation between male and female taste would no longer exist. However that is not the case. It still happens all the time, from fast moving commensurable to white goods and furniture, but one area where is still abhorrently obvious is within fashion. Within fashion it occurs specifically in sneaker culture. An area of fashion and a culture that has been mostly dominated by men since it’s conception, and the designs of sneakers continue to prove that women are a minority within the culture.

Nike recently released a some new additions to this years range for women, this recent release sports a patchwork aesthetic. Even until now the range of sneakers for women, released this year has been disappointing. Disappointing in the sense that the majority of the sneakers released are only causing the rift between male and female to grow wider. This inequality between men and women will continue to be made apparent when shoes such as the patchwork dunk by Nike are advertised as a woman’s sneaker.





At a first glance the shoe is appealing, brightly coloured and not too insulting in terms of girly colours being used but the more you look at it, the more it becomes clear that the use of patchwork on a shoe for women further implies that female taste are somehow drastically different in comparison to men.

The use of patchwork has been considered, and is intentionally used on a female shoe rather than a mans because of it’s historical associations to women. These patchwork designs acould have easily been applied to a male range of sneakers as well, the colours are bright and the dunk silhouette is already extremely popular with the male market. So then why hasn’t Nike made this release for the men? I think it has a lot to do with the associations of patchwork and the relationship it has with females.

The implications of patchwork and men would be seen as emasculating, real men don’t sit around with needles and thread making quilts and patchwork embroideries. At least not according to gender standards that appear in todays society.