Sneaker culture has long been awash is testosterone—the designs, the ads, the brand spokespeople have been bro with a capital B. The world seems oblivious to the fact that women make up nearly 50 percent of all sneaker sales and are as passionate about favorite styles and as able to create mega trends as men. Case in point: the recent female-driven Adidas Sambas craze.
Julia Neumann’s “No Boys Allowed” exhibit at Brooklyn’s The Museum in Spite of Everything aims to set the record straight. The intimate, shoebox-size gallery flips a girl’s bedroom into an immersive archive of sneaker culture told through female trailblazers in sport, fashion, music, and design. Styles on display include:
Billie Jean King’s Adidas “BJKs” (1974), the first signature sneaker for a female athlete
Sheryl Swoopes’ Nike Air Swoopes (1995), the brand’s first performance shoe for women
Serena Williams’s Nike “Queen of Hearts Dunks” (2006), which placed the tennis star alongside LeBron James and Tiger Woods in the Swoosh endorsement panoply
Vashtie Kola’s “Jordan 2” (2010), the first Air Jordan style designed by a woman.
Neumann, who curated the exhibit, says she chose the styles for their rich stories. “It’s not about curating hype or resale value,” she says. “Every pair in “No Boys Allowed” marks when a woman stepped into sneaker history and, despite the odds, left a dent.” For example, Billie Jean King sported blue suede Adidas sneakers in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes tennis match and, a year later, the style officially became the first signature sneaker for a female athlete. “She wasn’t just playing tennis, she was rewriting what equality looked like,” Neumann says. Ditto, she adds, for Sheryl Swoopes, the first Nike signature shoe for a woman, and Vashtie Kola’s 2010 Jordan 2, which cracked open sneaker design doors that previously for men only. “Together, these shoes are more than objects; they’re evidence. They show how women transformed sneakers from gear into tools of identity, equality, and cultural resistance,” Neumann says. “They mark the moments when women refused to be shrunk down or pushed aside and, instead, claimed space, rewrote history, and proved that culture has always moved forward on their terms. And we built a room to celebrate that—literally.”
The “No Boys Allowed” exhibit is in The Museum in Spite of Everything at 84 S. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY. It’s open Sept. 13-14 only, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Intimate by design, it holds just 50 people at a time. RSVP here.
If the response to the exhibit is strong, Neumann will look to extend the run and potentially take on partners. In the meantime, she believes this is the ideal venue for “No Boys Allowed” “because this museum exists ‘in spite of everything.’ It’s not a cathedral of high art or a sneaker reseller’s glass case,” she says. “It’s a bedroom a girl wishes she had growing up: messy, pink, personal, and full of memories, posters, and shoes that tell you you’re allowed to dream just as big as boys do.”
On that note, be prepared for a sensory experience. “This room smells like popped bubblegum, ambition, and rebellion,” Neumann says. “Whereas a guy sneakerhead’s room probably flexes stacks of boxes and exclusivity, this room is less about hoarding and more about continuing to write history. It uses footwear as the entry point, but its heartbeat is resilience, visibility, and the audacity to claim space that was never offered to women. It’s art disguised as nostalgia, rebellion wrapped in wallpaper, and proof that culture moves forward only when women decide the rules don’t apply.”
As for Neumann’s current go-to kicks? “Anything that balances style with not tripping while carrying coffee, pregnancy belly, and two bags at once,” she says. “The Air Swoopes are in rotation when I want to feel like a history lesson with laces.” The Air Adjust Force x Ambush in black and psychic purple is another current go-to for her. “I love Yoon Ahn’s designs and how she resurrected a silhouette long forgotten. Very Y2K of me,” she says.
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