Feature: Nora Vasconcellos x adidas Skateboarding

Nora Vasconcellos was adidas Skateboarding's first female pro rider. The Nora Capsule was the next step, and it's a different thing entirely: not a signature shoe with her name on it, but six pieces she designed.

Why the distinction matters

Plenty of skaters get a colourway. Far fewer get to decide what the collection is, and fewer still when they're the first woman a brand has signed to that level.

What she made is unisex — tees, outerwear, trousers and a shoe, for men and women, without the usual arrangement where the women's version is the men's version made smaller and given a different colour. For a part of the industry that spent decades treating women's skate clothing as an afterthought, that's the interesting decision.

The film

We wanted to know how the collection got made rather than what was in it, so we asked Candice Lo to find out.

She'd recently graduated from the London College of Fashion in production and styling, and had already worked with fashion magazines and luxury brands. Her own work goes at diversity, identity and what gets counted as beautiful — which made her the right person to ask about a collection that exists because somebody questioned who skate clothing was for.

She cut it as a retro edit rather than a clean campaign film, all grain and quick cuts, closer to how skating has always been filmed than to how fashion is. Nora's skating carries it.

Who else worked on it

Candice Lo, Quentin Guthrie, Rebecca Naen and Andre Castellucci — all London-based, all working on it together.

What we currently stock is in our adidas collection.