Cart is empty

Go to SF Shop

How Elina Banerjee Is Sharing India’s Growing Sneaker Culture With the World

elina banerjee

For many, India usually isn’t the first country associated with the sneakerspace. But make no mistake, that’s all changing. While the country’s sneaker community and surrounding interest in kicks grow, Elina Banerjee has been at the forefront. Through her platform Sneak-HER, Banerjee sparks and facilitates crucial discussions with women in sneakers – the ones that aren’t necessarily being had at major sneaker events – and shares diverse perspectives from those not traditionally championed on an international scale.

We linked up with Banerjee as part of our Taking Control of Their Narrative series and discussed her experience getting into sneakers, India’s sneaker culture shift and much more.

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a lawyer by profession. Sneakers kind of happened to me during high school. I used to play basketball and was intrigued by the players, the teams, and who was wearing what. [Sneakers] were a big hit at the time, but I didn’t have my own income to buy them, so it was just passion from far away, looking at them and obsessing over them. But then I grew up and was like, ‘Okay, I can buy myself a pair.’

In India, I didn’t see a lot of women who were into the sneaker space – my first interactions were all with men. There was hardly any space for women for a long time. When I grew my own collection and started talking about sneakers, I didn’t see a reciprocation towards me from the community. I was kind of taken aback, but considering we live in a patriarchal society, it was also something we had accepted just happens. But, I don’t know, something clicked in me that maybe we can do something about it, and I spent two years researching things, talking to people like Titi Finlay. These people helped me just understand how our community actually works and why, with all of its glories, it’s exclusive rather than inclusive.

I’m not saying it hasn’t changed, and I’m not saying that things aren’t moving towards a better direction, but I feel like there’s a lot to do before we get there. India as a space gets missed and is still something I feel needs a lot of attention. Communities in India, in terms of sneakers, again, are very exclusionary. There’s an adopted narrative around sneakers there, but the culture is growing. We have a lot of homegrown sneaker brands coming about, and that’s something I feel is a positive change again. But I’m sorry, back to myself – I’m a lawyer. I’m an artist. Like I said, I have a crazy obsession with sneakers – learning everything about them and finding out who’s wearing what and how.

When did you start getting into sneakers? Five years ago? Ten years ago?
High school, so that was like 2016 or 2018. That’s also when the surge of sneakers was coming about in India. People were getting to know. But I didn’t know about that because I was so unaware. I was still in school and stuff. But my initiation into sneakers came from basketball.

And what’s your sneaker collection like right now?
I shouldn’t say this, but I have gone down the bottom of hoarding sneakers. And that has always been my mantra. I will not buy a pair unless I need it and feel like it’s something that will add to my collection. I have some pairs I’m very proud of. I have a Martine Rose, one of my closest pairs. Then I have some PUMA. I collect PUMA and Nintendo collaborations. I haven’t gone through it for a while, but I have a couple of pairs of PUMAs I really love. I have a couple of pairs of Jordans, too.

I feel like I only focus on pairs that will actually bring joy to me, and that’s what sneakers are about, right? It’s not about getting every pair that comes into the market. So I think the only thing missing from my whole collection, which I intend to buy, is a New Balance. Which one? I still have to figure that part out.

Let’s unpack what it feels like to be a woman in the space. Your bio talks about celebrating and acknowledging the inclusivity of women and the LGBTQIA+ community in the sneaker space. Tell us about your experience and why you started Sneak-HER.
It was not something that I thought very long about, but it was just an idea that came about after what I had gone through. It was not a bad experience per se, but it was mostly in terms of how I felt cut out from the whole community – not feeling able to talk to somebody about my obsession and go to events and be seen. I feel like there were bits and bits of things that accumulated and led to me asking, why not do something about it? Because in India, I would not say it’s nascent, but the sneaker culture is still growing into itself. For it to improve, there has to be a voice that speaks about the problems in the community.

One of the issues I feel is not talked about a lot is sneaker jobs. There are hardly any jobs for women, so hardly any women get hired. There’s hardly any voice for women at the grassroots level, and I feel like there’s a lot of noise up top. Yes, there are a lot of conversations happening, but you need to go down to the root level to understand these issues. You can’t just bring focus [out of nowhere]. I feel like a lot of brands nowadays bring focus to the same women again and again and kind of miss the point about what they actually want rather than just glorifying the fact that they’re being inclusive. You say you’re being inclusive, but are you actually? Because you’re not having conversations.

I think I felt the same here in India – that there were a lot of women around me who were sneakerheads doing their own thing, but I didn’t see a force with that. I needed to feel a force with the fact that there are women who are doing this. So then I did a lot of research on whether or not I’d be able to do this in India at all. Will this be a failed attempt on my part? And even if it is, I don’t really care about that. I really care that it starts a ripple effect and people start talking about it. Then I started finding people who actually are into sneakers. I had some collaborators who were interested in doing this with me, and I went on to do this event.

This event in itself had all women, all the women entrepreneurs, from sneaker artists to even sneaker resellers who were women, which to my knowledge, did not exist until I started finding out about these people. The focus was to bring women forefront. After that, I feel like Sneak-HER just grew in terms of conversations. My idea for the platform is to have more conversations with a number of people to understand different perspectives, which you will not get when you go down to a sneaker event. I feel that you don’t hear important stuff. You don’t hear conversations about whether or not women should be hired more, whether or not there should be inclusivity in terms of sneaker spaces etc.

That is the reason I push a lot of concepts forward in this market as well. We need to have more dialogue. Dialogue lets people hear you out. You get to hear a perspective that you never had. For me, that’s how it started as well. I didn’t have this perspective at first. I grew into them and started hearing other people’s views, and that’s how Sneak-HER came about. I want to give other people that experience.

How do you think the culture of sneakers within India is changing as a whole?
I feel like there are two sides to the coin. There’s the growth part of sneakers, which is exponential. It’s like everyone is into sneakers nowadays. People acknowledge the spaces that exist now. And, as you mentioned, boutique stores are present. There’s this growth around sneakers because of how much commercial value there is, and there is also a part where people are actually just so interested in sneakers.

On the flip side, I feel like the culture is restrictive. It’s just about what’s being shown or adopted at the time. Whatever people see is what they adopt. We have a multiplicity of events happening in India now, by the way. They’re sneaker events to the max. And I’ve been to these sneaker events. For me, they’re pointers, which I feel are very necessary to include. I’m not saying go have a panel talk. I’m not saying do very women-specific things. But do include women entrepreneurs and people who would not be seen otherwise. Don’t only make it about the clothes, don’t just make it about the shoes. Move ahead from it.

I think when you have so much duplicity of the same things, you kind of get over it as well. That’s what has happened to me. I was choosing my sneakers and choosing events I had to go to as well. I feel like there’s always a good and a bad side to things here, and I feel like there are more things we need to talk about that still get brushed off.

As far as the LGBTQIA+ community is concerned, I’m a part of it, and I feel like there are no sneaker drops aimed at us. There are no specific sneaker drops unless it happens in July, which is just sad. There is no idea as to whether there are people who are doing things in the LGBTQIA+ community and talking about it. So I feel like there was never a platform in India until some people realised it was needed. I feel like that’s also one of the reasons that Sneak-HER caught the attention it did.

There needs to be someone from that community – an amazing creative – who works with a brand like New Balance and Nike on all the days outside of June/July.
Yeah, I mean, that’s what I’m saying. Inclusivity has become a facade. It’s a word thrown around so much that now people either do it as a social responsibility or so that people see you doing it. That’s not how it is supposed to be. You don’t have to try at inclusivity. You just have to include it in your normal processes. Because if you don’t do that, you’re establishing this idea that you only choose certain people because it benefits you.

The sneaker space is a community – not an industry. Industry is a part of it, but it’s a community first, which people generally forget. If it is a community, then you treat it like a community. You don’t exclude people from that community. In terms of the LGBTQIA+ community, I feel like there is still so much under wraps. People don’t talk about that.

This is just from personal experience, but I was supposed to work with a customiser because I wanted to have a piece that was just for them. I’m not saying that others couldn’t get it, but something dedicated to or celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community. But I was not able to translate that artwork. But I feel like, why shouldn’t there be more – if you are going to section a day for an LGBTQIA+ drop or a women’s exclusive drop? Now women’s-exclusive drops have become the norm, which is great, but we can go further, including when it comes to disability. We all know the story where there’s never a very exclusive drop for people with disabilities, you know? That’s the whole thing – allow people to at least experience what’s made for them first and then open it to the public or something. I feel like in India now, we see a lot of artists coming about, and there are some who are from the LGBTQIA+ community, and they’ve got more of a voice now. And that’s great to see.

It’s important to have these conversations confidently and empower those who may not be as confident.
That’s the whole intention I went for with Sneak-HER. If I’m not doing it, somebody else might be, somebody who has the capital for it, somebody who’s talking about it. That’s all I think is necessary. Once you start talking about it, things start to happen. But I feel like I’m still doing things for women here and LGBTQIA+ individuals. I feel like until I’ve reached LGBTQIA+ individuals and people with disabilities to help them have a voice, I will be completely exhausted because there’s literally so much to talk about but hardly anybody to talk to.

Do you have plans for another event you’ll run in India? What are the plans for the future?
I run everything by myself, and because it’s become a one-person army, I still don’t have an event in the books. But I do have other stuff I’m doing, which is, again, something not present in India itself. I’m not going to be the person who says, ‘Oh, I want to be the first responder to things,’ but I just feel like if there’s nobody else doing it, I might as well. So I have a few things that people don’t expect sneaker spaces to do coming this year or maybe next year. But the first priority for me is to start getting voices from different countries because I have had conversations with women. If you see my page, you will see a lot of women from India who I feel have a strong perspective, but now I want to expand to different countries.

What that does is that the Indian audience, which I have, gets to hear people. I have a few people from Pakistan I want to talk to. They’re doing brilliant work. There are so many. I’ve had conversations with them, and for me to just connect with them so easily is also a blessing. I have been very lucky.

For me, even talking to Titi Finlay was such a blessing because there were certain things she told me during the time I was planning this Sneak-HER event that just helped me build it better. I want to quote what she told me. The intention [of Sneak-HER] was to make the event inclusive, but there was this nagging thing about whether or not to have men in that space because I wanted women to feel safe and flourish. But Titi very clearly said that if you intend to have inclusivity, don’t intend for exclusion. Don’t be exclusive about the audience.

We got a lot of questions when we were putting up the posters and everything for the event, asking if men were allowed to attend. They thought, ‘Okay, men are not allowed because it’s a women’s event,’ and we blatantly told them, ‘It’s open for everyone. We want you to come and celebrate the women. We want you to come and acknowledge the women.’ And it was a success, to be honest. It was very overwhelming for me because I hadn’t done an event before. I had done exhibitions and stuff, but I hadn’t ever done an event like that. But the best compliment I got was when people stayed for the whole event.

The only kind of giveaway I took to heart was that people actually understood what we were doing. They understood the concept around it. So event or not, I feel like I still will be doing things to help the community rather than doing just another event for the sake of it. Maybe we’ll do something else.

To connect with Sneak-HER, head here.

Subscribe to our Newsletter