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GRAZIA: Nike have been at the forefront of supporting female athletes for many years. Can you tell me a little bit about how the brand is uniquely designing for her/how she moves during play?
Tania Flynn: We have the NSRL (which is the Nike Sports Research Lab) [located in Oregon] where we have scientists, engineers and all kinds of highly intelligent people working with us to collect the scientific data and analytics to start the creative process. We have tens of thousands of body scans/data to understand how women are shaped and sized so that we are creating a product to adequately reflect the population. We also look at how the body moves, how it works, how she’s sweating, where she’s sweating, where she needs more mobility and flexibility etc. We start there. We start from science.
The creative teams then translate that data into the product that we all want to wear. They think about material selection, knit structures, breathability, and then the functionality of the product without compromising on style. We then validate it and test it on athletes. That’s another source of information that we can then leverage and utilise and thus perfect the designs so they work.
GRAZIA: When your team first looked at these results, and then all the data the brand collects from tens of thousands of women, what was the biggest takeaway?
TF: The average size of women is not the way that we were sizing our products. Even for brands who offer extended sizing, what Nike are now about to do is to take into account the ratio of proportion and shape, versus only looking at the height and weight to determine size—because we can all be the same height and weight and be different sizes!
GRAZIA: You’ve been with the company 18.5 years, how has the sports bra changed in that time?
TF: One of my favourite things to talk about! I’m very passionate about talking about sports bras because I was that girl growing up who had to wear two [sports bras] in order to contains the girls. Today, we have simplified our offering. We have three different franchises—Swoosh, Alate and Indy bras—who each have a different style preference [making the process of a finding a sports bra easy]. The technology has become better in terms of the industry, too, and brands now offer more breathable fabrications, better cup construction, clasps and adjustability.
But I think our new approach to how we create bras and bring them to market also has to do with, whether you’re bigger or smaller busted, and how that shouldn’t equate to the choice of bras that you have to express yourself. I am larger busted, and even when [the industry] moved to a space where I could wear one, it was with super thick straps, a super thick band, was not very sexy or flattering – there always only one for me.
We’ve now shifted to this space where if you want something super sporty with high coverage, or minimal and style focused, you can find that bra for you; the traditional sports bra comes in low, medium and high support, the minimal dancer bra comes in low, medium and high support. We’re really thinking through preference and choices which allows you the performance that you need. To me that’s a really big advancement that I think a lot of women appreciate because they aren’t put into a style box because of the size of their breasts.
GRAZIA: Do you have a favourite sports bra?
TF: Yes! I love the Indy!
GRAZIA: For many of us growing up, women’s sports were not televised. When you are watching the stadiums and pubs across the world explode in record roars as the Women’s World Cup plays out, as someone who has been all for the progression of women in sport for so many years, what do moments like these mean to you?
TF: It’s amazing. It’s about time, quite frankly. It’s so wonderful to witness this change, be part of ushering in the change, and being here in Sydney and seeing it before our eyes. I think it does wonders for little girls and boys. When we’re looking at women’s sport, these kinds of moments tend to be a lot more community based. You see families, young kids, women supporting women, men supporting women, and it’s really great to see that we’ve come further with record attendance, record viewership and we’re championing that.
GRAZIA: In your opinion, how important is it for our country to leverage this moment to ensure all girls and women have access and pathways into sport? And how does that begin with product innovation?
TF: When we talk about mental health and wellbeing, we know movement is a really important ingredient to be on the right side of that. I think there are many benefits of not just traditional sport but movement in general. We want to invite more people in to experience movement on their terms—whether that’s on a football team, or yoga, or swimming, or however they choose to move. We want to invite more people in to do that.
So, in supporting that type of activity, I think you’re supporting a healthier society. We know there are so many benefits for young girls playing sport; leadership, confidence, etc. We also know one of the barriers to sport is access, and another barrier is puberty and the embarrassment of not having the right sports bra, or not having access to products like leak-proof period protection shorts. These sorts of things help keep girls in sports.
“I think there’s a correlation between innovation which helps keeps her in sport, and obviously the access, of course.”
GRAZIA: What is the Nike team working on next? How is the brand moving the needle again?
TF: We will always continue to innovate and improve upon as we get feedback on new materials and methods of make. It doesn’t stop, it’s a journey. We’re really focusing on providing not just a bunch of options that make their way into your everyday, but choice in the expression of that. What you wear close to your skin is personal. What you put on every day is a choice about how you want to present to the world. We want that to seamlessly integrate with what you need to move throughout your day. We’re thinking about the diverse body types out there, we’re celebrating all women in all the sizes and shapes that they come in, and really continuing to improve upon how we design for her.
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