It’s been a rough few months for the sneaker industry, one of the cornerstones of the Oregon economy.
Nike and Columbia Sportswear, both headquartered here, announced layoffs. Adidas, which has its North American headquarters in Portland, forecasted an annual sales decline in the region. Under Armour’s founder returned to the corner office, a move that wasn’t well received by Wall Street, and Allbirds, once a darling for its focus on sustainability, just announced its second CEO change in a year; both companies have major outposts here.
That somber mood makes a forward-looking new exhibit at the Portland Art Museum perfectly timed. The question that drives “Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks,” is this: “What is happening now that’s going to change what we wear in the future?”
That’s according to Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada, which developed the exhibit and partnered with the American Federation of Arts and the Portland Art Museum to bring it here.
The answers to Semmelhack’s big question are especially significant as the footwear industry, uncharacteristically chastened, ponders its own future.
The exhibit features 78 artifacts that reflect four themes: innovation, sustainability, transformative and virtual.
The transformative section, for example, includes sneakers that showcase how the industry is becoming more inclusive, including shoes from Saysh, a company “for women, by women” and founded by decorated Olympic sprinter, and former Nike endorser, Allyson Felix. The section also includes the Nike Go FlyEase, a slip-on sneaker designed for people with limited mobility.
(The exhibit also includes a display of roughly four dozen pairs of sneakers from Nike’s ongoing partnership with Doernbecher and programming in partnership with Portland’s Sneaker Week, an annual industry festival.)
Among the artifacts are technologies that at a glance seem to have missed.
For example, many people will remember the futuristic self-lacing shoes Michael J. Fox’s character wore in 1989′s “Back to the Future” sequel. Nike later released a few pairs of the shoes, known as the Air Mag. There’s a pair in the exhibit, but Nike’s never done a big release of the sneakers.
But while you can’t buy Air Mags at the nearest Nike store, you can buy the Nike Adapt BB, another self-lacing shoe, which also is in the exhibit.
“This exhibit is really looking at new ideas, but also acknowledging that oftentimes it is ideas that have happened in the past that are the ones that only come to fruition decades in the future,” Semmelhack said.
Sustainability is another area where progress has been choppy, and one that’s of particular interest to Semmelhack given the industry’s staggering overproduction.
The shoe industry makes over 20 billion pairs of shoes a year. That’s enough for nearly three new pairs for every person on the planet. Hundreds of millions end up in landfills where they take decades to decompose.
But consumers have been slow to embrace sustainable materials and brands haven’t been able to spark demand for it.
Use of Flyleather, a more earth-friendly Nike material once described by GQ as “here to change how leather sneakers are made,” fell 92% in the last three years, according to the company’s latest corporate responsibility report.
But there are signs of progress.
The “Future Now” exhibit catalog describes an environmentally friendly foam that Allbirds designed and made available to competitors. The exhibit also includes a concept shoe made from mushroom leather that can be “grown” at home with a mixture of corn flour, mycelium and water.
“Future Now” was on display for 18 months in Canada before coming to Portland. It’s scheduled to visit another three museums after leaving Portland, starting with the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.
Semmelhack said the exhibit doesn’t draw conclusions, but it points to some technologies that could move the industry forward.
“I hope that visitors leave seeing how wide ranging the solutions are to the challenges of meeting the footwear needs of the world’s population,” she said.
Sneaker Week co-founder and CEO Herbert Beauclere will host several events as part of "Future Now," a new exhibit at the Portland Art Museum about the future of sneakers.Courtesy Herbert Beauclere
The exhibit makes the Portland Art Museum the latest to put sneakers on display.
“(Museums) are starting to recognize sneakers as the wearable art pieces that we’ve always recognized them as,” said Sean Williams, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based SOLEcial Studies Community Academy, which prepares students for non-design careers in footwear.
In 2015, New York’s Brooklyn Museum exhibited “The Rise of Sneaker Culture.” In 2019, Williams and business partner Dee Wells partnered with New York City’s Port Authority Museum Bus Terminal on an exhibit of sneakers called “From the Feet Up.”
For the past several years, Williams has worked with brands to upgrade sneakers with technology such as computer chips that can authenticate collectible shoes and offer more information about products. For example, if a brand collaborates with a musician on a limited-edition sneaker, a computer chip placed in a shoe can give the buyer access to the musician’s current playlist.
Other ways to blend physical and virtual worlds — including sneakers in video games and the metaverse — will be on display as part of “Future Now.”
“This is the new wave where retail and sneakers should be going,” Williams said.
The exhibit will, at least temporarily, fill an odd hole in Portland. For all its sneaker history, the city is light on places to celebrate it, aside from Sneaker Week and the sneaker-themed coffee shop Deadstock.
“You can drive by all the headquarters of the sneaker brands, but they’re not open to the public,” said ShoeZeum owner Jordan Geller, who previously owned and operated a museum of Nike sneakers in Las Vegas and now consults on high-end sneaker sales. (The physical ShoeZeum is now closed.)
Geller, who lives in Beaverton, looks forward to once again seeing sneakers on display in a museum setting.
“I’ve always viewed sneakers as art,” he said. “They begin as art. They begin as a drawing that a designer puts on paper. That becomes a shoe. The shoes are so beautiful in and of themselves.”
If you go
Where: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.
When: March 30-Aug. 11; open Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Monday through Wednesday.
Admission: $25 adults; $22 seniors 62+ and college students; free to members and ages 17 and under. Free admission on the first Thursday of every month.
Special events:
- Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada, will join a discussion about the exhibition on March 30 at 4 p.m.
- Herbert Beauclere, Sneaker Week co-founder and CEO, will host several events, including a discussion with three local apparel designers on May 2 at 7 p.m. and a footwear design camp June 17 – 21 for children ages 11 – 14.
– Matthew Kish covers business, including the sportswear and banking industries. Reach him at 503-221-4386, mkish@oregonian.com or @matthewkish.
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