Nik Kacy’s Gender Neutral Shoes are Changing the Fashion Industry
Story by Tori Radday, Photos by Nik Kacy
For years now, the fashion industry has had a major hole that has been overlooked: gender neutral shoes. Nik Kacy spotted this gap while developing his personal style and has recently launched a footwear line to close this gap and provide fashion-forward, gender neutral footwear that everyone can enjoy.
Nik Kacy was born in Hong Kong and grew up in New York. Kacy attended Pepperdine University and graduated in 1997; he double majored in fine arts and advertising. After he graduated, he spent his time working in various creative fields. However, he didn’t venture into fashion until he decided to launch his footwear line.
Kacy had always dreamed of finding shoes that suited his personality that also fit. He explains “basically I spent my whole life as someone who was masculine and always wanted to wear more masculine looking shoes but I could never find my size because I’m a women’s size 7.5. I felt very discriminated against, very underrepresented and was always being told that I was in the wrong section of the store and that I needed to go to the women’s section instead of the men’s and there’s a part of me that was always like why can’t I just wear the shoes that I like based on the style? Why should it matter if I was born as a woman or not? My gender should not matter.”
In 2014, he began brainstorming and developing plans to launch his own footwear line that would solve this issue and bring genderless shoes to the fashion industry. In 2015, he started a successful Kickstarter campaign which led to the actual launch of his footwear line.
The first collection in Kacy’s footwear line is a line of masculine shoes. The masculine collection is inspired by all the shoes that Kacy has wanted in the past but that haven’t been available for purchase in his size. He explains that “the fit of the shoes is neither men’s nor women’s, it’s sort of in between, very androgynous.” In the first collection, there are five different styles of shoes and the cost of the shoes range from $300-$400 per pair.
Currently, Kacy is working on another collection inspired by a feminine aesthetic. He hopes to include a high-heel aspect in this collection of footwear. He’s also working on developing a leather holster bag as an alternative to the traditionally feminine purse.
Kacy’s brand will surely revolutionize the fashion industry. In an over-saturated market, Kacy did a flawless job of providing an innovative product that was previously missing. He states that he plans on expanding his brand and that he wants “to represent a brand that is all about style and not about gender.” And if that’s not forward-thinking then we don’t know what is.
You can check out and shop his designs on his website. You can also keep up with the brand socially on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Kacy caters to Philadelphia and New Jersey as well as nationwide.
