At just 11 years old, John Charles of Hockinson can proudly say he’s designed a collection for Nike.
And not just any collection, but one of six lines designed this year by kids in Oregon and Southwest Washington who have received medical care at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland.
The Doernbecher Freestyle program unveiled the collections at an auction Friday evening, where the highest bidders took home the first sets of the one-of-a-kind collections. John’s three-piece collection went for $35,000 — the highest bid of the night.
All proceeds from the event and from retail sales of the gear — the collections will be available online and at select Nike retail locations, including Nike Portland, beginning Nov. 21 — benefit Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.
“I never thought this was ever gonna happen,” John said Friday evening. The collection, he said, turned out “way better” than he ever thought it could.
“It’s crazy what they can do,” he said.
Last summer, John was diagnosed at Doernbecher with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that inflames the lining of the digestive tract. The inflammation often spreads deep into the layers of affected bowel tissue and can be both painful and debilitating, causing abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition. There is no cure.
John takes a handful of medicine every day — a combination of anti-inflammatory and immune-suppressant medications totaling 11 pills — to keep his disease under control.
John’s diagnosis and his subsequent time at Doernbecher played heavily into the design of his shoes, hoodie and hat. John worked with a team of Nike designers and had creative freedom over every detail of the line, down to the plastic tips on the ends of the shoelaces.
And John took full advantage, writing funny messages on those plastic pieces. On one shoe, they read “tube face,” a nickname John’s older sisters gave him while he was in the hospital. On the other shoe: chicken and jojos.
“My dad and I like to go to Winco and get chicken and jojos,” he explained.
John is proudest of a design component that could be easily overlooked. He created the pattern for the material lining the inside of his shoes, the inside of his hat and the hood of his hoodie sweatshirt.
The black fabric is covered with pink cartoon drawings of some of his favorite things: twin faces (John has a twin brother, Jonah), Washington (his home state), pyramids (his dream vacation), chicken legs (his favorite food), a face with a raised eyebrow (his talent), a basketball court (he loves to play) and seven pill capsules — “because I can swallow seven pills at once,” he said proudly.
John was tasked with designing the Nike Air Jordan XIII Retro high-tops. The shoes are teal and black — the colors John was wearing when he was admitted to Doernbecher — with neon yellow laces and his initials. On the bottom of the shoes, the words “courage,” “fight” and “strength” — all written in John’s handwriting — are on the soles. On the outer soles, John wrote “Crohn’s” — that way, with every step he takes, he’s working to stomp out the disease that changed his life.
John was given a display pair of his shoes, signed by Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.
“It’s a little crazy,” John said, when he learned Lynch signed his shoes.
John’s hoodie is teal, with the sleeves bleeding into a bright purple. The back of the hoodie features John’s favorite saying as he battles Crohn’s: “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice.”
On the inside of the hoodie, John added two secret symbols. The first, a bright pink heart with “mom” written inside.
“She’s like my super hero,” John said of his mom, Mary Charles.
The other symbol is the outline of a dog, a shout-out to John’s beloved German shepherd, Teagan. A picture of Teagan is also included on the inside sole of his shoe.
John’s hat is also teal and black and features his initials. The underside of the bill includes the same phrase as his hoodie, and the purple tape inside the hat has the names of each of John’s siblings and his parents.
And on the back of the hat, just above the snapback, John wrote “Got Guts” — the unofficial Crohn’s motto and words John lives by each day.
