Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good is a visually stunning and culturally significant exploration of Nike’s women’s apparel, curated by Maisie Skidmore. Spanning over 350 pages and featuring more than 575 images, the book draws richly from Nike’s archives – catalogues, campaign photography, sketches, and first-person athlete narratives – to chart the evolution of performance wear and the shifting landscape of women’s sports.
It’s more than just a corporate retrospective. This book tells a powerful story of innovation and identity, with standout contributions from 22 Nike athletes – including South Africa’s Olympic-winning middle-distance runner, Caster Semenya – who reflect on how apparel impacts confidence, freedom, and performance. The phrase “look good, feel good, play good” becomes a thematic anchor, illustrating how design is inseparable from empowerment.
The book strikes a balance between nostalgia and futurism, showcasing iconic pieces like the sports bra and leggings while hinting at what’s to come in inclusive, athlete-centred design. As both a design object and social commentary, the book captures Nike’s longstanding – and evolving – commitment to women’s sport, body diversity, and cultural influence.
Whether you’re a design enthusiast, fashion historian, or Nike fan, this is an essential addition to your library – bold, beautiful, and deeply resonant.
Featuring renderings, imagery and historical illustrations, the book is a collector’s item. Here’s a short extract from this magnum opus on women’s sports apparel.
The Body: Owned
“In 1977, a little less than a century after the introduction of the health corset, costume designers Hinda Miller, Lisa Lindahl, and Polly Palmer Smith came together in search of a solution to the insufficient support an everyday brassiere provided for running. American track-and-field coach Bill Bowerman published Jogging: A Physical Fitness Program for All Ages in 1967 (three years after he and Phil Knight had founded Blue Ribbon Sports, soon to be Nike, Inc.). By the mid-1970s, jogging had swept the nation, and Lindahl’s sister, Victoria Woodrow, was an enthusiastic and undersupported subscriber.
Together, the three designers created a number of early prototypes of the sports bra. They found them lacking each time until, upon the suggestion of Lindahl’s husband, they stitched together two men’s athletic supporters to create a garment that had stretch, support, and movement incorporated within it. The first example of the resulting prototype – initially named the Jock Bra but quickly renamed the Jogbra – is still held in the Smithsonian’s collection today. The irony is almost too much – women’s support is secondary to men’s, even when it comes to their underwear.
But the difficulties the Jogbra encountered in the world at large were the same as those faced by all sports brands: stores didn’t know how to market it; salesmen (and they were principally men) didn’t know how to sell it.
During the 1980s, as both second-wave feminism and the studio fitness craze took hold of contemporary culture, attitudes toward women’s sports and the clothing they wore to do them shifted. Clothing became tighter, shinier, and bodies more exposed, and with this shift, female sexuality became more apparent and irrepressible. Unitards, bodysuits, and crop tops became part and parcel of fitness culture: clothing designed both to encourage its owners to create sculpted bodies and, having done so, to showcase them.
At Nike, against this backdrop, the first product to tout a built-in support bra was the Airborne, a top that debuted quietly in the fall 1986 catalogue. Made from a blend of polyester, cotton, and Lycra, with a Lycra and nylon lining, it was designed to fit like a crop top – underwear moonlighting as outerwear – and was released in six colourways: white, tropic blue, canary, red, grey heather, and black.
But if the presentation of a garment that at last provided breast support was understated, its reception by athletes and amateurs alike was not. It was such a hit that during the making of the 1988 ad “It’s a Woman’s Prerogative,” cross-training athlete Joanne Ernst told DNA that she was beyond thrilled to get her hands on something approaching a sports bra. Previously, she had been forced to wear swimsuits to minimise breast pain while moving; in the designs presented to her to wear on the shoot, she saw an alternative. (Others were similarly enthused that day, as the stylists struggled to keep hold of the Airborne. Many athletes left with them at the end of the production.)
Names are powerful, however, and it took time for Nike to call a bra a bra. For almost a decade, a series of variations on the Airborne followed, but always with names such as the Running Airborne, Fitness Top, or Racerback. Until 1994, when the silence that had cloaked the word was finally broken with the appearance of the Bra Top in Nike’s spring catalogue. The subtle but watershed moment marked a new era, one of transparency, dialogue, research, and innovation. Five years later, Brandi Chastain’s World Cup-winning goal and the ensuing celebration shook off the shame surrounding it altogether.”
- Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good: Nike Apparel is published by Phaidon and distributed by Jonathan Ball Publishers. It is available at all bookstores
WIN!
Jonathan Ball Publishers and YourLuxury Africa are giving one lucky reader a copy of Nike’s Feel Good, Look Good, Play Good book.
All you have to do is answer this simple question:
Which famous South African sportsperson is featured in the book and has recently released a memoir called The Race to be Myself?
Follow Jonathan Ball & @yourluxury_africa on Instagram, and tag five friends in your answer, and you could be the one to bag this piece of athletic history.
Entries close 31 May 2025
Terms & Conditions: The voucher is not transferable, re-saleable or refunded for cash. The prize must be taken up (or rejected) as awarded and cannot be transferred to any other person, sold, or converted to cash. The competition is open to all residents of South Africa over 18 years of age, except employees of YourLuxury Africa. By entering, you are joining the YLA Lounge and will be receiving access to special offers, exclusive content and marketing material. POPI DISCLAIMER: We respect your right to privacy and therefore aim to ensure that we comply with the legal requirement of the POPI Act, which regulates the manner in which we collect, process, store, share and destroy any personal information you have provided to us.
