Sneakerhead culture made an appearance in Caldwell Lounge Monday, March 27 when the new creative collective Marginalia Making hosted a SneakerTag workshop where students were able to create their own takeaway sneaker hang tags.
The term sneakerhead has various definitions depending on the person describing it. Maurika Smutherman, a Ph.D student in communication rhetoric and digital media, considers herself a sneakerhead and said her definition might not be the general definition.
“I personally think that a sneakerhead or someone who’s interested or invested in sneakerhead culture is a person who truly values the sneaker and the story behind this sneaker,” Smutherman said. “I, myself, am a sneakerhead. I have a lot of sneakers, I love collecting them and finding different sneakers. I also use sneakers as a way to express myself every day when I wear them with my outfits.”
Sneakerhead culture has roots in basketball athletes, hip-hop dance and Black culture. Although sneakers were used for various actions, most sneakerheads today do not like to overuse their shoes or mistreat them to avoid creases on them.
At the workshop, students could draw anything they wanted and turn it into a hang tag. The workshop consisted of shrink plastic sheets, sharpies, beaded chains, gloves and a heating gun.
Marginalia Making is a space for people who are interested in making as an intentional or critical practice. Their purpose is to diversify STEM education by being inclusive and showing critical making doesn’t always have to be linked to engineering.
“Each person that is part of the collective has a different set of skills and is interested in different topics,” said Fernanda Duarte, assistant professor at the Department of Communication and advisor of Marginalia Making. “So really, the idea is for each person who joins Marginalia Making comes to share their knowledge and engage with these collaborative forms of sharing and knowledge making.”
Students involved with Marginalia Making each have different skills, are passionate about critical making and would love to share their skills and knowledge with other students.
“Maurika is very interested in the idea of material archives,” Duarte said. “They’re not just things but really a way to archive knowledge and practice, so that’s how she is approaching [critical making]. That’s why she’s looking at sneakers as an expressive medium for Black culture.”
As a sneakerhead, Smutherman was inspired by a TikTok video to create sneaker hang tags as a way to tell a story through fashion. She was motivated to move forward with the workshop because she uses sneakers to express herself everyday and she believed others do the same as well.
“I think it’s really important to have this culturally situated approach to make and incorporate into the work that we’re doing,” Smutherman said. “I think the sneaker hang tag definitely ties back to Black culture very significantly.”
Duarte is also a big fan of sneakers, but follows the culture in different ways than Smutherman.
“I am an avid YouTube watcher of anything sneakerhead related,” Duarte said. “As soon as they are dropped, I like to look at the economics and how sneakers, just like NFTs, have become kind of a very valuable currency. I love the comfort, the aesthetics and I love wearing [sneakers].”
Nevertheless, Marginalia Making is presenting sneakers as more than an object and something that gets priced and hyped. The collective creates opportunities for people to come together to make and learn.
“How is it an extra way to engage with your exploration of your identity?” Duarte said. “How does it embody the ideas of a designer that’s trying to tell a story? And how is it that when we choose to wear that sneaker and care for that sneaker, clean that sneaker and restore that sneaker, what does that say to how we’re also caring for ourselves, thinking about who we are as we are wearing that sneaker?”
By the end of the semester, students will be able to sign up for workshops asynchronously on the Marginalia Making website and will be able to create their own objects, including the SneakerTags.
People who are interested are encouraged to reach out, participate in the meetings, propose new opportunities to teach and learn how to make things. For additional information, you can email the collective at marginalia.making@gmail.com or contact Duarte at fduarte@ncsu.edu. Stay up to date with Marginalia Making through their Instagram.
