A skateboarding clothing brand run entirely by women that ploughs part of their profits into charity hopes to make the sport more inclusive through sales of their vibrant streetwear.
Doyenne Skateboards is a collective of female skaters who have designs on ensuring better representation of women, LGBTQ people and people of colour in the skateboarding community.
Founded in 2017 by three women who choose to remain anonymous, preferring their work to speak for itself, Doyenne makes brightly coloured hoodies, t-shirts and accessories.
READ MORE: Glasgow designer creates sustainable clothing brand from used jeans
They said: “We like Doyenne to stand for itself as a social brand as there is a community that helps us and we don’t want to take all the credit.”
But revealing that the clothing line was women-run was vital to the movement.
Doyenne said: “Generally women in history never took credit for what they did so we wanted to let people know that we were a skateboarding brand run by women.”
In a sport that is overwhelmingly male, Doyenne’s aim is to encourage more people who might not see themselves reflected in the usual demographic of their local skatepark to pick up a board.
Their collection is ‘ungendered’ by design with colours and fabrics flouting any received gender stereotypes.
They said: “We think there’s no point in making gendered clothing especially in skateboarding where girls, boys and even people that don’t identify with any gender all dress the same so being ungendered in that way is inclusive.”
One of the founders started skateboarding in her early twenties but noticed a real “absence of women” on the scene.
She said: “I wanted to start when I was younger but in my mind I didn’t think it was something I could have done. When I started friends told me how much they wanted to try it and I started asking myself why are people not doing this? Why is it so intimidating?”
Setting up Doyenne was a direct response to the glaring lack of representation and the brand now plays a part in making the sport more accessible to anyone who wants to try it.
Doyenne said: “Women and other minorities already have to fight to find a place in general. Our brand is a way to make it easier for everyone so they don’t need to keep fighting.”
Helping the wider global community is important to Doyenne who wanted to reach further than Scotland when it came to their ethos of empowerment and equality.
They said: “We wanted to think outside of our box. There are really different realities than ours where it’s not really about skateboarding - they have no rights. So if we want everyone to be included in skateboarding we need to think about people living in different situations.”
A percentage of every item sold is donated to organisations that support women or disadvantaged young people through education and skateboarding. Profits from their latest collection goes to Free Movement Skateboarding, a non-profit that works with young refugees in Athens.
Previous collections have supported SkatePal, who aid young people in Palestine, and Concrete Jungle Foundation who have built skateparks in Peru and Angola.
READ MORE: Glasgow mum who survived near-fatal brain bleed pens book to empower working-class women
Doyenne said: “It’s important to realise the privilege we have just by living in the UK and we can’t just give support to people who are already privileged. We can’t just say we don’t want to think about that because it’s somewhere else. These charities create a safe space for kids who are going through horrible, difficult stuff where they can just have fun and have people to look up to.”
As well as designing merchandise that is a big hit at home and abroad - items have been sent as far away as Alaska - Doyenne runs monthly beginners skateboarding sessions in their bid to make changes more locally.
They said: “A lot of people have started skating after the sessions, which makes us really happy. We can see the joy in people’s face.
“It’s not just a lack of representation in Scotland, it’s everywhere but we can see it slowly changing.”
Groups of up to 40 have turned up to learn or remember how to skateboard. The feeling of freedom takes them back to childhood when things were simpler, according to Doyenne.
They said: “We wanted to create a brand that every type of person of every gender and ability and sexuality could say, this is something for me, it’s made for people like me.”
www.doyenneskateboards.com
www.instagram.com/doyenneskateboards
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article