A footwear academy in downtown Portland teaches students from around the world to be themselves while designing shoes for big-name brands
Text by Martin Cizmar
Images by Amanda Smith
When D’Wayne Edwards was 11 years old, he studiously illustrated football trading cards. “I happened to get a Franco Harris card—it was one of the only times they actually showed the whole body, and the shoes were the most difficult part to draw, so I just fixated on that,” he says of the card featuring the Hall of Fame halfback. Six years later, Edwards designed a basketball shoe that won a national competition sponsored by Reebok. So it made sense that when he was 19, Edwards already knew he wanted to be a shoe designer.
But for a Black kid from Inglewood, California in the late 1980s, there was no easy way to actualize that dream. When Edwards asked his high school counselor about going to shoe design school, he was advised to join the U.S. Army. Instead, he took a job as a clerk at then-ascendant shoemaker L.A. Gear, where he stuffed his own designs into the employee suggestion box for six months until they gave him a desk in the design department.
There, he worked on bold designs like the iconic Catapult, a basketball shoe with a rubber spring in the heel promoted by perennial all-star Karl “The Mailman” Malone. Over the next 10 years, Edwards moved to urban fashion label Karl Kani and then footwear company Skechers. Next, he arrived at Nike. There, he put his stamp on the world’s most storied sneaker series, designing the Air Jordan XXI and XXII.
Now, Edwards is the founder Pensole Footwear Design Academy in downtown Portland. Inside the school’s sparse and spacious office, students work an average of 14 hours a day developing designs by hand before transferring them to computers to polish. Over the average course of 12 weeks, various instructors educate them on materials, supply chains, and even apparel.
But the foundation of the academy is Edwards’ effort to teach students to know themselves, and sell themselves. He has them put their own logos on their designs unless they’re working on a project for a specific company. “You’re a brand. You should have your own logo,” Edwards says. “You should represent yourself the same way that brands you buy and love represent themselves to you.”
Once the students from all over the world have developed this personal brand with Edwards’ guidance, they are ready to take full advantage of the academy’s curriculum. Pensole is modeled on nursing schools and welding schools—places with apprenticeship-style programs where you do the work while you’re in school. It is the institution Edwards was looking for when he started on his career, which he was able to create because of his time in the workforce. The academy also acts as a bridge between companies and students. While there, students are able to create designs for brands like Nike, Adidas, Cole Haan, and Vans. (Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour all have design teams based in Portland.)
Pensole Academy is the sort of institution D’Wayne Edwards was looking for when he was 19. Edwards was able to establish this company through his hard-earned success in the sneaker industry.
“We try to get students to think as if they were on the other side of the monitor looking at their portfolio. What would impress them?” he says. “Most of the time when professionals are looking at your work, they’re looking at your work to understand how you think. Your thought process can be applied to almost anything. So I stress that if you’re going to apply it to anything, try to reinvent that thing, redefine that thing. Don’t just draw another shoe.”
Edwards is proud of Pensole’s placement. Graduates are designing Air Jordans, Keen rafting shoes, and Wolverine boots. But the founder also recognizes that his students and their designs are larger than the companies with which they work.
“There’s tons of people gifted with the ability to draw, like I was, but it’s what you do with it, and knowing what to do with it,” Edwards says. “We emphasize understanding self, who you are as a person, and what you want to get out of life. People want to go work at some of these big footwear companies—I tell them, it’s great to have those ambitions and dreams, but no company should define who you are as a person and as a creative.”