A three-way player: Offense, defense, and design

Gabby Anderson’s dorm room desk does double duty: homework central for microeconomics and statistics during the week, art studio on the weekends.

Her principal medium? The same sneaker models she wears playing guard on the women’s basketball team — along with those she custom designs for clients, including some high-profile professional athletes.

On a recent afternoon Anderson ’26, who lives in Kirkland House, unpacked her brushes and acrylic leather paints from their plastic crate and unboxed a pair of fresh white Nike Air Force 1s. Dipping her flat paintbrush into the red pigment, Anderson began applying the first layer of her planned design: floral patterns and song lyrics set against a background of fiery red and yellow hues. 

“My favorite part is learning peoples’ stories behind why they want their design,” Anderson said. “As I’ve continued to create for people, presenting them with their shoe that expresses exactly what they want brings me so much joy because you see people light up when you do something for them like that.”

Anderson is an economics concentrator with a studio art secondary, balancing academics and athletics with her creative financial endeavor. Her work is recognizable for its bright colors, bold lines, and playful animated style.

Graffiti by Gabby started in 2020 as a pandemic hobby when Anderson was taking high school classes from home in Ohio. Inspired by a design she saw on social media, Anderson decided to paint a pair of her own sneakers.

“Then I had a friend ask me to make them a pair of shoes,” she said. “After that, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of fun, maybe I’ll do it some more.’”

After starting an Instagram page to showcase her work, her designs began getting attention. Her first request for a custom pair of sneakers came during the summer of 2020 nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality. Nicki Collen, then head coach for the Atlanta Dream, asked Anderson to design her a pair of sneakers to commemorate Breonna Taylor. 

“I was so excited. I remember she was on ESPN, and they mentioned my name while I was watching,” Anderson recalled. “I freaked out in the car. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my shoes are on ESPN. They just mentioned me,’ And that’s when it hit that I’m doing an actual thing, and this is probably an actual business, and I need to take it seriously.”

While still in high school, she was commissioned to paint sneakers for then-Seattle Storm star Sue Bird, Golden State Warriors’ Moses Moody (who was then at Arkansas), and Delaware Blue Coats’ R.J. Hampton Jr. She designed shoes for a Nike campaign with Dallas Mavericks player Kyrie Irving, and did a series of commissioned paintings for Walmart’s “Beauty in Color” campaign. 

In 2020, she also painted sneakers for all 15 members of Texas A&M University women’s basketball team, designs that reflected a range of messages the players wanted to promote, from heart disease awareness to Indigenous pride and female empowerment.

“Each girl gave me a list of things that they were very passionate about, something that they wanted on their shoe, and I followed up with each of them and was like, ‘Can you tell me more about this?’” Anderson recalled. “I got to learn not only their stories and where they came from, but what makes them who they are, what drives them to play basketball.”

At Harvard, Anderson has been learning more about business through her economics concentration and courses in the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship. In addition to the basketball team, Anderson is involved in the Black Arts Collective and Office for the Arts programming.

She has branched out from sneakers. As a first-year, she painted cleats for New England Patriots player Deatrich Wise Jr., as part of the NFL’s “My Cause, My Cleats” project. Last year she designed 10 pairs of skates for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

She also last year launched her own line of kids’ school supplies — backpacks, lunch boxes, and pencil pouches — tailored toward African American children and emblazoned with the slogan “Brilliant, Authentic, AND Black.” The line was inspired by a pencil pouch Anderson had as a child, which had a picture of a little girl who looked like her.

“I want kids to walk into a store and not just see one backpack with a Doc McStuffins or a Princess Tiana on it, but someone who represents them in their youthfulness,” Anderson explained. “I also wanted it to inspire them to be more than just what they see on that bag, which is where I came up with ‘Brilliant, Authentic, AND Black.’ I really wanted kids to understand that you can be all three, and being all three is what’s going to help you thrive in whatever space you’re in.”

Anderson said that school, athletics, and Grafitti by Gabby actually mesh more easily than one might expect.

“In my classes I am learning about different things to do with my business, and my art classes are teaching me new techniques that I can use when I’m making shoes.”

“In my classes I am learning about different things to do with my business, and my art classes are teaching me new techniques that I can use when I’m making shoes,” she said. “Working with athletes ties directly back into basketball, and my own experiences from that can help me relate to these professional athletes I’m working with.”