In 1978, political activist and designer Gilbert Baker created, hand dyed and hand sewed two flags with eight colored stripes (pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue and violet) to be a positive symbol that would unite gay, lesbian and transgender people. He called it the Pride Flag and debuted it that year in San Francisco.
The community loved the flag. And organizers of San Francisco’s Pride Parade determined it would be a powerful look to line the entire route of the 1979 event with four colors on one side of the street and four on the other.
What each color represents: Pink: Sexuality, Red: Life, Orange: Healing, Yellow: Sunlight, Green: Nature, Turquoise: Magic, Blue: Serenity, Violet: Spirit
With $10,000 and an ask for 400 handmade flags, Baker went to work. But the flag company helping to make the flags could not come up with enough pink fabric, so he had to remove pink from the flag. To make it an even split for the parade reveal, he removed turquoise from the flag.
Forty years later, the six-color flag remains the ultimate global symbol of unity among the LGBTQIA+ community.
To celebrate Baker’s impact and memorialize his legacy, Nike partnered with the Gilbert Baker Estate, working hand-in-hand to create this year’s 2019 BETRUE collection. For the first time, the footwear, apparel and accessories all feature the icon’s original eight-color flag, as well as other meaningful “Gilbert-y” touches and symbols of Pride.
Here are the highlights:
There’s a new logo, which replaces the “BETRUE.” text with Baker’s original eight-color flag.
This is the first time stripes appear in the collection (previously, the six-color rainbow has been designed as a gradient), which represents fluidity through the identity spectrum.
There are five shoes in the collection, and every shoe’s left sockliner will be pink and have Baker’s signature, while every shoe's right sockliner will have the Pride Flag’s eight colors with each color’s meaning.
To nod to the fact that Baker handmade everything he designed, Nike designers gave each shoe a hand-crafted effect by embroidering things, including the eight-layer Swoosh on the Nike Air Max 90 and the rainbow flag on the Tailwind 79.
The Nike Tailwind, which first sold the same year Baker’s flag debuted, is included in the collection for the first time. The light blue and pink deconstructed mesh upper is a play off a crop top.
Baker was always covered in glitter, sparkle and bedazzle, which is why a lot of the 2019 collection is too. Abundantly. The Nike Spark Lightweight Crew socks are the first Nike socks to feature glitter, for example, and Nike’s fastest shoe ever, the Nike Zoom Vaporfly NEXT%, is covered in glitter so spectators will see a sparkle as racers fly by.
Designers brought back T-shirt graphics and an old logo from the Nike vault that connect to the 70s and 80s — Gilbert’s prime.
Everything in the collection is unisex. This is the Nike Heritage Shoulder Bag, which has a glitter sheen to it.
The 2019 BETRUE collection will release at select global retailers on June 1, and on June 8 in North America on nike.com, SNKRS and at select Nike stores.
By the Numbers: How Nike is Supporting the LGBTQIA+ Community
100 percent: Nike has consistently received 100 percent scores from the Human Rights Campaign for the past 17 years
20+: The number of organizations Nike is supporting this year to advance the LGBTQIA+ community through grants administered by the Charities Aid Foundation of America
$3.6 million: The amount Nike has provided in financial and in-kind support to LGBTQIA+ causes since 2012
$1 million: The amount Converse has contributed to longstanding local and global LGBTQIA+ community partners since 2014
Learn more about this year’s grantees here.
About Nike’s BETRUE Collection
BETRUE started in 2012 as a grassroots effort led by Nike employees in the PRIDE Network seeking to build a community diverse in orientation, identity and expression focused on community initiatives to advance equality in sport.
The collection, which is created and managed by Nike designers in the LGBTQIA+ community and Nike’s PRIDE Network, releases each year in June to celebrate National Pride month and supports all individuals regardless of gender identity or who they love.
