Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good

The first book to chart a visual history of women’s sportswear, and the key role that Nike has played in it over the last 50 years

This is a book about Nike sportswear and what it means to women. The garments women wear, and why they wear them. It’s about athletes, from the elite to the aspiring amateur, running marathons or running errands. It’s about the spaces we perform in, and the way we use clothing to do it: from the track and the fitness studio, to an online world and the street outside.

Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good visualizes the relationship between women and the garments they wear through five design archetypes from sporting history: warm-ups, jerseys, leggings, sport bras, and shorts. Steeped in narrative, history, and Nike’s abundant archive, the book’s rich imagery spans reproductions of Nike’s trade catalogues that date back to the early 1980s, period and contemporary photography, sketches, advertisements, fabric swatches, seasonal color palettes, original design proposals and patents, logos, product and campaign shots, and everything in between.

Each chapter features interviews with Nike athletes, trainers, and other collaborators, along with insightful texts from cultural commentators. Across more than 350 pages and 575 images, this unprecedented volume not only maps the development of women’s sports apparel but proves its potential, in whatever context, to make athletes who identify as women feel at their most powerful.

Featuring contributions from: Dina Asher-Smith, Scout Bassett, Joan Benoit Samuelson, Sue Bird, Deyna Castellanos, Chandra Cheeseborough, Anna Cockrell, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Kirsty Godso, Xochilt Hoover, Rayssa Leal, Tatyana Mcfadden, Naomi Osaka, Megan Rapinoe, Sha’carri Richardson, Caster Semenya, and Dawn Staley.

Featuring essays by: Dal Chodha, the Editor-in-Chief of Archivist Addendum; Michelle Millar Fisher, the Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Heather Radke, an essayist, journalist, and contributing editor, and reporter at Radiolab; Samantha N. Sheppard, an Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Cornell University; and Natalie E. Wright, a historian of design and disability.

Maisie Skidmore is a writer and editorial director whose work explores fashion, art, design, and their intersection in contemporary culture.