It’s the perfect image to market a new running sneaker: Sha’Carri Richardson, a two-time Olympian and one of the world’s fastest women, holding a one-handed runner’s lunge and wearing Melitta Baumeister x Nike’s neon orange Vomero Premiums.
But an athlete of Richardson’s caliber wasn’t who Baumeister initially had in mind when conceptualizing her collaboration with Nike Running. The German-born, New York-based fashion designer was thinking about women like herself: rookie runners who enjoy the endorphin rush but aren’t hung up on shaving off seconds or perfecting their form. Who run simply as a way to celebrate that they’re able to—that they're alive.
