Vanessa Bryant Calls Out Nike After Gianna Tribute Shoe Surfaces Online Without Her Permission
Vanessa Bryant addressed why a Nike shoe she helped designed as a tribute for her little girl Gianna and spouse Kobe Bryant had appeared online without her permission.
Vanessa Bryant isn’t satisfied after the footwear she imagined as an accolade for her late little girl has seemed on the web.
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She took to online media on Wednesday, June 2 to respond to somebody’s photograph of a shoe Vanessa herself helped design for Gianna Bryant. Vanessa’s 13-year-old girl dies with Kobe Bryant—Vanessa’s better half and Gianna’s dad—and seven others in a deplorable helicopter crash on January 26, 2020.
“This is a shoe I worked on in honor of my daughter, Gianna,” Vanessa wrote on Instagram. “”It was going to be called the MAMBACITA shoe as an exclusive black and white colorway on her daddy’s shoes. I picked the colors in honor of her uniform, the number 2 she wore just like her uniform, the inside pattern, Kobe and Gigi on the back in gold instead of Kobe’s signature, the inside shoe details (butterfly, wings, halo), etc.”
She proceeded, “The MAMBACITA shoes are NOT approved for sale. I wanted it to be sold to honor my daughter with ALL of the proceeds benefitting our @mambamambacitasports foundation but I did not re-sign the Nike contract to sell these shoes. (The MAMBACITA shoes were not approved to be made in the first place.) Nike has NOT sent any of these pairs to me and my girls.”
Vanessa added that she was confounded regarding how this individual happened to end up with a pair of the shoes, as they shouldn’t be accessible in stores.
“I do not know how someone else has their hands on shoes I designed in honor of my daughter, Gigi and we don’t,” she wrote. “I hope these shoes did not get sold. @nike.”
She likewise shared a photograph to her Story that somebody had posted of the shoes being worn. “How/Why is someone wearing my daughter’s shoe? This isn’t right,” Vanessa captioned it.
On April 19, Vanessa composed on her Instagram Story that Nike and the late NBA star had parted ways prior that month after she and the athlete’s estate didn’t renew the agreement. Nike additionally affirmed to the same to the sources that at the time that the agreement had finished.
“I was hoping to forge a lifelong partnership with Nike that reflects my husband’s legacy,” Vanessa wrote in part back then. “We will always do everything we can to honor Kobe and Gigi’s legacies.”
