Lillian Wong, left, and Tassi Barnes compete in a race during a froSkate meetup on Aug. 14 at the Burnham Skate Park on South Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/TNS
CHICAGO — Three years. That’s how long it’s been since members of the froSkate community rolled onto Chicago’s skateboarding landscape with skatepark meetups for BIPOC femme, queer, trans and nonbinary people to learn the sport among one another. Now the skate crew has its own shoe — their first collaboration — and it’s with Nike SB.
The project began about 18 months ago according to froSkate founder/CEO Karlie Thornton. Nike SB approached the collective to design a shoe that was a celebration of those who haven’t always felt seen. Designed by Thornton and froSkate vice president L Brew, the “All Love. No Hate” Dunk High is available in skate shops and on the SNKRS app.
Thornton, a St. Louis native, wanted to learn how to skate, and came together with friends to bring the concept of froSkate to fruition in spring 2019. The group has been supporting beginning and intermediate gender-diverse skaters ever since with free gatherings at skateparks where camaraderie and representation are front and center.
The skating collective’s mission is about inclusion and encouragement. Skaters just show up at a meetup with or without a board and are welcomed into the fold. When it began, the skating sisterhood pulled in dozens of skaters at each gathering. Since then, it’s grown in numbers and programming — froSkate has merchandise in local stores, froSkate has shared its voice and solidarity in local protests and froSkate hosts events like group trips, movie nights, and Friendsgivings.
“One of the key reasons we wanted to support froSkate with this shoe is their unique mission,” said Kelly Bird, global brand manager of Nike SB, in a statement. “Thornton and Brew are committed to increasing representation and providing resources for communities typically unseen in mainstream skateboarding media.”
“We are thrilled with Nike’s support and commitment to creating opportunities for young, ambitious black and brown folks with collaborations like this,” Brew said in a statement. “More companies should follow Nike’s example. All industries should amplify the livelihood of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and non-cis male individuals.”
We caught up with Thornton to hear about the growth of the Chicago crew, which has gotten “a lot of attention and momentum so fast.” Thornton was in the process of sending out invites and putting together boxes of exclusive froSkate merchandise for skate shops in the U.S. and Canada.
Q: How did Nike SB reach out to froSkate?
A: In an email. We had no idea if it was real or not. We were like, “Is this spam?” (Laughs.) I had to check in with some friends. We set up a meeting with them and we got on a call and it was a whole team of people. They all had Nike emails. I was like, “OK, are y’all serious? Us? Did you get the right organization?” But they wanted to work with us. At the time, we didn’t know how big this was going to be. It wasn’t until months later that we realized this is a global, real-deal thing.
Q: How did froSkate design the shoe?
A: It was definitely a team effort design. It was so funny because when we first started working on this shoe toward the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, we had no brand identity at all. We were still figuring out our logos; we had no colors, no font; everything was all over the place. Working on the shoe really challenged us to get our brand identity together. Who is froSkate? What energy do we have? The whole (Nike) team helped us to hone in on what the story of our shoe would look like. We wanted to keep it creative. We wanted to keep it gender neutral.
Q: What lessons have you learned since froSkate began?
A: I’ve learned how to make better safe spaces for all kinds of people. That’s definitely something that you need to work on as a community builder. And make sure that you are bettering yourself, that you’re able to look at yourself and see where you’ve gone wrong and be able to fix that, and just set your ego aside. Now, this is so much bigger than you. That’s something that I’ve been learning is how to truly listen and prioritizing self-care more, trying to take better care of myself so that I can take better care of other people as well.
