Coming in with a BANG: SCAD freshman collaborates on sneaker design with BANGS Shoes

2021 was a big year for SCAD freshman Brooke Mitchell. She traveled out west, she graduated from high school and she started her first year of college. But her biggest achievement by far was designing the Desert Daisy High Tops for BANGS Shoes, a collection that has sold out again and again since its release.

Brooke’s older sister is influencer McCall Mitchell Gilbert, a travel vlogger that rose to fame on TikTok in 2019. She has since broadened her content to include Instagram and YouTube as well. As her following quickly increased among her social platforms, McCall received a message from BANGS Shoes about a sponsorship in May of 2020. The brand offered her to send her a few complimentary pairs of their signature embroidered sneakers in exchange for some photos of them posted to her Instagram account – an Instagram account with over 150,000 followers and counting.

Meanwhile, Brooke was working on growing her own custom shoe business on Instagram and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. 

“My sister could have easily accepted the brand deal and gotten a few pairs of free shoes out of it, but instead, she proposed the idea of a BANGS x McCall Mitchell sneaker collaboration,” says Brooke. “She knew that I had a passion for sneaker design, so she asked me if she could reach out to BANGS about possibly designing the shoe together.” 

BANGS was sold on the idea, and one year later, the Desert Daisy High Tops were sold out on their website.

“It was awesome,” Brooke says. “I’m so grateful that she took that leap for me.”

Since BANGS is based in Texas, McCall is based in Nevada, and Brooke is based right here in Georgia, the initial design process consisted of countless emails back and forth for months. “Working with Hannah Davis, the founder of BANGS, was such a cool process,” says Brooke. “I drew tons of sketches of our vision for the shoe, and watching that vision go from a sketch to an actual shoe that I could hold was so surreal.” 

The BANGS x McCall Mitchell collaboration was inspired by the deserts of Arizona, a place that McCall holds dear to her heart. “We chose to take inspiration from Monument Valley because we felt like it had the perfect desert vibe that we were looking for,” says Brooke. “We also wanted to use rustic orange and burnt sienna tones, which are very trendy right now.”

Brooke’s creative vision was a hit. “People loved the cactuses that we implemented in our design because it added the perfect pop of green, but also because it was a motif that BANGS had never used before.” Since the release of the BANGS x McCall Mitchell collaboration, the company has adapted to create more collections with embroidered cactuses and succulents due to its success.

“I really do owe it all to my sister,” Brooke says. “I wouldn’t have had this opportunity without her.”

Although her Desert Daisy design with BANGS was a one-time collaboration, Brooke is hopeful about working with the company again in the future. “As I continue to further my education as a SCAD student and gain a little more design experience, I would love to reach out to them again about a job opportunity,” she says. BANGS is a relatively small company, but it’s only getting more popular among the Instagram influencing world. Since Brooke was able to collaborate with them early on, it’s likely that the company will be on board with hiring a familiar face.

Brooke is a first-year industrial design student, but she’s very excited about the sneaker design minor that she’s recently added to her graduation plan. “The sneaker design minor was introduced to SCAD last quarter, and it sounded perfect for me, especially after the BANGS collaboration.” As far as her post-grad route, Brooke still sees herself owning her own custom shoe business, just on a much larger scale. “Hopefully I can gain some experience by working with bigger shoe corporations like Nike or Adidas before then,” she says. “I have a lot of cool ideas for sneakers and other shoes, and of course I could share them with Nike or Adidas or even BANGS, but there are some ideas that I want to keep for myself, too.”

But once she gets to that point – with both her BANGS collaboration and her SCAD education on her resumé – there’s no doubt that Brooke has a bright future.

However, that’s not to say that she can’t expand her business before graduating from SCAD. As a freshman, Brooke is mostly taking her foundational courses right now in Atlanta. But once she learns some of the basics from her sneaker design classes, there won’t be any reason for her to hold off on creating something bigger. “I definitely think that if I was just a little more educated on shoe design, I could start right now,” she says.

Brooke says that Instagram has been a huge tool for her as an independent artist, and it’s currently the only platform that she relies on for custom shoe orders. “Since I already had my own custom shoe business before I teamed up with BANGS, the collaboration gave me a good bit of publicity,” she says. And since the collaboration, the official BANGS Instagram account now follows Brooke, which has helped with publicity as well. “Any Instagram user that’s interested in my custom shoe business can see that connection when they visit my profile, and it establishes a level of credibility that I didn’t have before.”

When asked if she has any advice for young creative professionals that want to expand their customer bases through social media, Brooke says that the secret to having a successful business starts with talking about your business. “If you’re passionate about what you’re creating, people will see that passion, and they’ll become passionate about your product, too. That’s how support is built.”

She also encourages a nothing-to-lose mentality. “Look, I know I’m a freshman, and I know I’m young… but my best advice is to just put yourself out there,” she says. “Reach out to your dream company – even if you don’t feel like you have the right credentials. What if they love your personality and want to hire you anyway? You have nothing to lose, and the worst that they can say is ‘no.’ But even then, you’re one step further in the right direction.”

Brooke’s DMs are always open for custom shoe designs on her @brookes.brushes Instagram account, and she has a Google Form linked on that profile for easier ordering.

The Desert Daisy High Tops from the BANGS x McCall Mitchell collaboration are currently restocked on their website, so be sure to get your hands on them while you still can.