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Airing Of The Quilts Festival, October 2025: I am standing beneath a sky rippling with color, quilts swaying in the Southern breeze, with each one whispering stories stitched across generations. Airing Of The Quilts Fest, held just outside of Selma, Alabama—a city that still echoes the fight for justice, inclusion, equality and civil rights—wasn’t just a visual feast: it was a living museum of legacy, creativity and resilience. As a designer and leader within one of the world’s most influential creative brands, adidas, I was reminded that innovation does not begin in boardrooms or labs—it begins in communities, in the quiet, rhythmic labor of hands shaping beauty out of necessity, love, and memory.

The quilts of Gee’s Bend are more than textiles: they are artifacts of survival and triumph—a language of pattern and improvisation borne out of scarcity and imagination. Standing before those bold, geometric forms, I saw a kind of design genius that predates and transcends formal education or corporate structure. These women—and the generations before them—were, in essence, the original designers: sourcing materials sustainably, iterating creatively under constraint, and crafting works that carried not only warmth but identity.

As I walked between the lines of quilts strung across porches, trees, and church fences, I thought about what it means to inherit a creative legacy. At adidas, we often speak about “futurecraft”—how design can shape what’s next. But here, I witnessed pastcraft—how tradition, rooted in struggle and faith, can guide the moral compass of modern creativity. The women of Gee’s Bend remind me that innovation is not about abandoning the old to embrace the new but about finding the thread that connects them.

Each quilt told a story: of mothers teaching daughters, of hands learning to see, of design as testimony. It made me reflect deeply on my own purpose as a designer: to honor the lineage of creativity that made it possible for someone like me—a Black woman—to lead in a global design house. My journey is not separate from theirs; it is an extension of it. Their resilience, their resourcefulness, and their refusal to let circumstance define their expression—that is the foundation upon which I stand.

Later that afternoon, as I sat on the future site of the new quilting center sharing a plate of homemade barbecue with Mrs. Claudia Pettway Charley—co-founder of Sew Gee’s Bend Heritage Builders and a fourth generation quilter—I felt that foundation take on human form. With warmth and quiet pride, she told me the story of the Pettway family name—a name that stretches back to the era of slavery, when it was imposed upon her ancestors by the families who once enslaved them. And yet, over generations, that name has been reclaimed, redefined, and rethreaded with love. What once symbolized ownership has become a banner of belonging. Hearing her speak, I realized that legacy is not only what we inherit—it is what we choose to heal, honor, and carry forward.

That meal, shared in laughter and remembrance, was more than a conversation—it was communion. It reminded me that design, at its highest purpose, is not just about what we make, but what we mend, and who we become in the process.

In Gee’s Bend, creativity is communal. Quilting circles become sanctuaries, and every thread stitched is a conversation between ancestors and the living.

The morning of the festival, I joined a quilting workshop led by one of the elder quilters of this community. There was no pattern to follow, no sketch or plan—only intuition. She handed me a needle, a strip of fabric, and said subliminally: “Just trust where it wants to go.” As I began sewing, I felt something ancient awaken—a rhythm older than design school or brand process. Each stitch carried its own quiet wisdom, reminding me that true creativity isn’t about control; it’s about communion. That moment of improvisational making taught me that design can also be prayer—a surrender to what wants to be born through your hands. I realized how deeply this mirrors the way I move through leadership and innovation: not always with a fixed blueprint, but guided by intuition, by purpose, and by the stories that demand to be told.

That lesson—to trust the stitch, to let instinct lead—is one I carried with me long after I left Gee’s Bend.

As a designer, I’m trained to look for patterns, but what I saw in Gee’s Bend defied the predictable. The quilts were wildly expressive: asymmetrical, raw, alive. They told me that perfection is not the goal—truth is. This experience reframed how I think about creativity in my own work. The Gee’s Bend approach is just as improvisational (human) as it is methodical. The quilts of Gee’s Bend are archives of emotion, history, and ingenuity. They reminded me that as technology enables innovation, I must remember that every product, every design system, every mentorship initiative I lead must also carry a narrative—a reason to exist that uplifts, includes, and transforms.

As I left the festival, I felt a renewed responsibility. My presence there wasn’t just as an observer; it was as a bridge. I carry the stories of those women into every room I enter. Their quilts have become blueprints, metaphors for how I want to shape the future of design education and access. Legacy is the fabric.

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This article has been produced in collaboration with adidas Purpose, Pitch Blend and TRENCH.