Yahoo Finance is celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month by highlighting some of the achievements of Hispanic Americans in business and tech.
Adidas (ADDYY) and Foot Locker’s (FL) youth culture incubator Greenhouse have collaborated on the Greenhouse x Adidas Speedfactory AM4 collection —designed by three LatinX artists — to commemorate Hispanic American Heritage Month.
Yahoo Finance caught up with deginers M. Tony Peralta, Lucia Hierro, and Bryan Avila, who shared their ideas on art and how their sneaker designs help celebrate Hispanic American culture.
Peralta, who is from New York and of Dominican descent, says that his heritage plays a big role in his artistry. “I represent being Latino and being Dominican, and as far as the artwork that I created goes ... It plays a really big part for me.”
Peralta’s shoe, dubbed the AM4 “Alsacia,” features a black upper splashed with red, blue, and yellow paint. It was inspired by a “Lechon” mask worn during the Dominican Republic Carnival in February, the Dominican month of independence. The mask itself is depicted on the heel of the shoe.
Los Angeles based Mexican-American designer Bryan Avila is known in the art world as “The Producer BDB.” His shoe in the collection is the Canvas x Adidas SPEEDFACTORY AM4 Mexico.
It is inspired by one of Mexico’s most popular exports — the Agave plant, which is used to make many foods and beverages, including tequila. The plant also has scientific purposes, and is used to study climate change.
“My artwork is an example of who I am,” Avila tells Yahoo Finance. “I like to document a lot of cultures, a lot of history, especially my own — Artists like Frieda and Selena, who are Mexican icons, which is something that shows up in my artwork.”
Lucia Hierro hails from New York City and created the SPEEDFACTORY AM4 Platanos shoe design.
“[My heritage] plays a major role. A lot of the work that I make ... it’s just about, about the lens of, of the maker. I think that having grown up in New York, having grown up in a Dominican household, it immediately sets me up to look at the world in a completely different way.” The AM4 features a mixture of yellow and green plantains on the upper of the shoe.
The entire collection is assembled in the U.S. and can be found on Footlocker’s Greenhouse app. Each pair retails for for $150.
Reggie Wade is a writer for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @ReggieWade.
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