Drawing from the aesthetics of underground scenes like UK garage, PinkPantheress has used the symbols and motifs of royalty in her music and design to subvert and play with traditional British iconography. For her flats, she added a pink crown stamp as a repeated element. The crown appears in patterns and on the insole and outsole.

PinkPantheress's shoe concept features a removable, changeable inner and a see-through outer shell. Featured here is the lace version of the insert.

PinkPantheress's career started in her bedroom, sharing loops with the world via social media. Her Los Angeles home is still a place of comfort and creativity, curated to bring a sense of calm to her creative process.

PinkPantheress wanted her flats to evolve with her style choices. On stage and off, she is always consciously building her look. Once she'd landed on the idea of custom inserts under a PVC layer, the team designed several patterns, including stripes, repeated metallic crowns and, in a nod to early-2000s styles, black and white polka dots.

“I think we are all very obsessed with personalization.”

— PinkPantheress

Charms and accessories were an early idea for how to make PinkPantheress's shoes customizable. Her team went through many rounds of exploration: bows, pearls, ribbons, crystals and hearts were all options.

One idea for the ballet flats involves a removable, customizable insert with a clear viewing window, allowing the style of the shoe to be changed on a whim. This idea ended up being part of the final design.

Once PinkPantheress decided to make her ballet flats customizable, ideas for different inserts came quickly, from polka dots to miniature crowns.

Though not ultimately selected, PinkPantheress initially explored using sequin material with her ballet flats.

Gemini in Chrome can synthesize web pages for easy understanding or sharing. PinkPantheress was able to summarize a mood board and quickly share inspiration with her team. This meant Gemini in Chrome could summarize the page, craft an email, and send it to the team, all without leaving the mood board.

PinkPantheress worked with shoemakers, researched and sourced with the help of Chrome, to create prototypes, or “pullovers” for her ballet flats.

PinkPantheress wear tests all of her flats, including her own design, to make sure they are comfortable to move around and perform in.

PinkPantheress compared her latest designs with inspiration from the web with the help of Chrome's Split View feature.

“Resin is my material first love. It is always very helpful to imagine the form first in transparency and with luminosity. It's how I mirror myself within the form.”

— Solange Knowles

Solange's first self-casted resin form studies from 2020.

“During the pandemic, I used Chrome to research how to create my own molds and cure my own resin form studies. These first forms I created were the foundation for me to continue to build more in depth ideas with more complex shapes and geometry.”

— Solange Knowles

“I used plexiglass to create my own early models of the sculptures. Doing this on my own, at this scale, helped me to understand and map out where seams needed to be in the fabrication process knowing that I wanted the copper sheets to appear as monolithic as possible while honoring the functionality of the material being easier to work with in large sheets.”

— Solange Knowles

“One of the things that excites me about working with copper, is the idea of both human to material charge, and material to human charge. This idea that copper houses all of these electrical atoms that can transmit that type of energy to the people engaging with it becomes performance in itself.”

— Solange Knowles

“When I'm using Chrome, there are at least 50 tabs open. Research is so vital to me, so I don't want to close anything because I don't want to chance risking where my information lives.”

— Solange Knowles

Tab groups in Chrome can help organize your browsing.

“I have spent a lot of time putting windows side by side and switching between them as I ideate and gather information and images for research. I have a very visual mind's eye and so I love being able to now have the functionality to do this through the split view feature. Juxtaposition is such a powerful tool in imagining how nuanced ideas sit side by side and I love being able to do this in real time.”

— Solange Knowles

“I often use the St. Heron Library as a resource for my sculptural practice. It features a lot of artists who have a lot of really innovative interpretations of material usage, and there's actually a lot of women artists in this specific book who have not received the notoriety they deserve. I specifically love this volume because it covers a lot of artists who work across various mediums and between sculpture and performance and music and dance. It just really inspires me to know that people have been working across different processes as a means of expression for as long as we can remember. I think that people present that as if that's sort of a new frontier, but it's helpful to remember that that has been a way that black artists have been expressing themselves since the beginning of time.”

— Solange Knowles

"Fred Eversley’s work was monumental in my understanding and discovery of sculpture as science. He is my northern star in resin works and defining the both mathematical and spiritual lineage within the forms and what I wish to radiate with my work.”

— Solange Knowles

“I find myself pretty deep in the interwebs which opens new portals that I wasn't even expecting, which is what I love about Chrome because it keeps the speed I need to operate on. Egypt is such a core foundation in my origin story. Very few civilizations understand material, architecture, and symmetry as rooted in spirit, the way Egyptians have throughout history. Knowing and understanding how they have historically used copper was affirming for the process.”

— Solange Knowles

“For my materials, I think natural stone, gems or crystals are cool. Something strong but purposeful.”

— Joe Burrow

The first design Joe really felt spoke to him featured stone and crystal-like elements in striking colors.

Joe uses Chrome to easily and quickly visualize what different material and piece combinations might look like. With Gemini in Chrome, he can take his designs and explore different creative combinations without ever needing to switch tabs.

“I'm really into crystals lately.”

— Joe Burrow

Joe Burrow’s recent interest in crystals evolved from his long-term love of fossils and other minerals. When thinking about a high level concept for his chess set, pairing crystals, with their interesting colors and properties, with modern chess piece design, was immediately appealing.

Joe worked with a designer to draw hand sketches to start visualizing his ideas.

Testing stones and different sizing for each piece, and marking where the cuts should go for the first prototypes.

A chess set should feel as good as it looks. Testing the texture and weight of different crystals helped Joe choose which materials to add to each piece.

Using Chrome to dive deeper into mineral information on many sites, Joe explored the properties of the crystals he likes, giving him a much stronger concept for his chess set.

Renderings for the board design to test aluminum or synthetic stone framing, walnut exterior and waterjet-cut stone inserts.

Different base designs change the color and weight of the pieces. This render shows a smaller crystal base for a sleeker design. Ultimately, Joe chose a bolder, more crystal-focused design.

The Knight piece was originally designed using fluorite. In production, fluorite was found to be too soft, cracking when worked. As a late fix, malachite, a similarly vibrant green crystal, was used.