We recently caught up with Jamal Nxedlana from Bubblegum Club to talk about their latest collaboration with Nike for the ShelfLife Rosebank store window art which pays homage to Nike Cortez’s 45th Anniversary.
From their interest in the culture, starting Bubblegum Club and getting to work with Nike on such an iconic shoe, here is our chat with Jamal:
When and how did your interest in the sneaker culture begin?
Bubblegum Club is a cultural intelligence agency, so we’re interested in culture, reporting on it and helping people understand it. It’s something that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.
What was the idea behind the bubblegum club platform?
We started in 2015 because we felt there was a need for insightful reporting on youth culture in South Africa and at the time we were just focusing on trend reports. We were looking at what people were producing especially in the music, art and fashion spaces and looking to understand why people were producing. So, it was basically making sense of that and out of that extracting insights and trends. Then in 2016, we launched an online platform and the trend reports were very much geared to businesses and organisations but they were not engaging the audiences that we were talking about. So, we launched the platform to directly reach the audiences and be a part of the community we were talking about.
Would you say that you have sufficient audience that you’re engaging with on the platform?
The audience is growing but I guess that you can never say it’s enough.
What message are you trying to get across through your platform?
We want more criticality when engaging with what we’re doing. Because there’s a lot of production that’s happening in South Africa, but our challenge is that there is no criticality. The criticality when looking at all these things is what’s going to better us as a creative industry and a country that is a cultural product. It’s about how we can add to the conversation and add to the dialogue in a more meaningful way.
How important is it for you to collaborate with various brands?
Collaborations with brands are what’s going to keep us going and allow us to continue to grow so that we can reach more people. It is important to work with brands, but we don’t just work with brands, we work with the organisation as well. We’re super interested in not just the brand space, but in education as well. The development of this country is something that we’re interested in and wherever we can contribute [we will]. There is a huge need for skills development in this country and that’s something that’s a part of what we do.
What’s the coolest campaign, to date, have you worked on?
Definitely our collaboration with Nike for the ShelfLife Rosebank store window. This has been our biggest project to date and it’s been super exciting.
It’s nice to work with a brand with so much history and heritage behind them. For us to work with them, start a relationship with them to see how they work, benefits us as well.
How did the collaboration come about?
Nike contacted us and I think it’s because of the photographic work that we have been doing over the last year or so – I guess we have been developing a unique image identity. Our approach is to always produce/create visuals in such a way that they have a message and have artistic value.
Take us through your artistic approach…
With the brief that Nike gave us, they gave us insight to the shoe and we started with that insight and because it’s such an iconic shoe, we started with where the shoes started. We looked at the ‘70s and that time period and what was iconic about that time, but obviously this is a shoe that was developed in the United States, so we tried to take a shoe whose identity is very much based in America and match that to what is happening in Sub-Saharan Africa. So we looked at a [paper] note, for instance, because it feels – iconic and that was one of the references and we were just drawing parallels and finding these links. From there we started to find these links and the styling is a very 70’s feel.
A lot of the styles from that time resonate now and it’s got a very fluid masculinity.
How long did it take you to finally decide on the final image?
The shoot was done in the afternoon in Brixton, we shot a few different options on a hill and on the street level. The shoot took a day and we selected images the next day and met with Nike to decide on the final image.
What story would you say you’re trying to narrate through that image?
For me, the image is very loaded with images of the notes and also images of Fela Kuti and lots of photographic references. The styling and hair were a big component of the shoot. We collaborated with a stylist and someone that I am very excited about – Mimi – and she takes old South African and African hairstyles and interprets them for a contemporary audience. And that’s also what this image was about – translating and contextualizing the Cortez and its heritage so that it make sense to young South Africans.
What is the story behind the pattern and art?
Nike’s original brief had patterns in the red, blue and white colourways and we used that as a starting point and developed that. But we looked at some of the local cultures, like Ndebele, Zulu and Xhosa tribal patterns as a starting point and using the Cortez colorways for this sneaker.
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