From Race Day to Every Day:
How Nike Reimagined Performance Jewelry
- March 28, 2025
At a factory in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, members of the Nike Innovation team stood around a table, eyes locked on their final sample. For months, the tightly knit group of women had been working to bring a new kind of race jewelry to life.
It had to be beautiful. It had to be durable. It had to move like an athlete.
Now, at last, the modern race reward is here.
“We had engineers, designers, project leads — so many different disciplines — all standing together making sure every last detail was right,” recalls innovation engineer Berat Gulecyuz.
The cross-functional team, made up almost entirely of women, was getting its first look at Nike’s After Dark Tour necklace: a race medal reimagined. The company has created beautiful, elevated jewelry in the past and consumers have loved it. However, this is different. It’s a piece that runners can wear long after race day is over that is sweatproof, reflective and elegant.
The pendant is the result of thoughtful engineering and collaborative teamwork. Tied to Nike’s After Dark Tour — a new global night-running race series designed for women set to debut in April 2025 — the innovation team created the necklace to match the energy and endurance of the event it celebrates.
Nike began exploring bespoke performance jewelry for elite athletes as early as the 2023 Prefontaine Classic, informed by feedback from a women’s running forum with the company’s top athletes. Once the concept was locked in during the summer of 2024, the team dove into the work to make their idea a reality.
“You can’t have a Nike product without performance at its core. So we kept asking: How can we make even the smallest elements more performance-oriented?”
Kendal Bagby, Operations Analyst
Constructed with innovative, sweat-resistant materials, the precision-engineered Swoosh pendant features a seamless magnetic closure, a sliding length-adjustment mechanism and engraved aglets that give a nod to the brand’s running footwear roots.
“You can’t have a Nike product without performance at its core,” says operations analyst Kendal Bagby. “So we kept asking: How can we make even the smallest elements more performance-oriented?”
The pendant’s surface texture features contours generated from elevation data pulled directly from After Dark Tour race courses, translating runners’ literal ups and downs into a unique visual texture.
“We extracted elevation data from the six different race locations,” says Sarah Hammond, lead computational designer. “The ripples on the pendant represent the topography of the course tracks, symbolizing the journey that runners take to reach the finish line.”
That symbolism isn’t just beautiful, it has purpose too. The texture enhances reflectivity, catching light from multiple angles and making the pendant more visible during night runs. On top of that, it features retroreflective coating, a technology often used on performance running products.
“It’s such a small piece, but the amount of engineering that went into making it feel seamless was massive,” says Hammond.
Throughout the process, the team never lost sight of who they were designing for: an athlete they understand personally.
“We know many women are already wearing jewelry while working out,” says senior design manager Haley Toelle. “They are looking for pieces that won’t get damaged by sweat. We saw this gap where we could take Nike’s innovation and engineering expertise and apply it to jewelry.”
"We built a community of women supporting each other, and that energy is reflected in the design."
Berat Gulecyuz, Innovation Engineer
The result, set to debut for finishers at the first After Dark Tour in Sydney on April 12, is more than a product. It’s a statement about what performance can look like and who gets to define it.
“This is a ‘by women, for women’ project, and that comes through in every decision,” says Toelle.
“We built a community of women supporting each other, and that energy is reflected in the design,” adds Gulecyuz.
For many members of the team, the reward runs deeper than launching a great product. The process itself — the energy in the room, the collaboration, the sense of shared purpose — has had a lasting impact.
“The best part of having an all-women team is coming together from different backgrounds and leaning on each other’s superpowers,” says Michelle Cantú, lead materials designer. “From product design and development to computational work, engineering and operations, everyone contributes in a cross-functional way. That collaboration makes the final product even stronger.”
The result isn’t something you tuck away in a box in your closet. It’s a prize you wear proudly, on race day and beyond.
“When athletes wear this necklace, I want them to feel the power behind it,” says Hammond. “The power of their own achievement — and the power of the women who designed it.”
