When casting ambassadors for their latest campaign, Dr. Martens looked for the kind of people who embodied the spirit of now and their new era of Made Strong. For our current youth generations, there is strength to be derived from new sources, ones defined by creativity, community and optimism. Both Niko and Xiuhtezcatl embody this shift.
Niko is a 22-year-old California-based first-generation Mexican singer-songwriter who finds strength and inspiration in her Latin American heritage to create beautiful music. Xiuhtezcatl is a 23-year-old artist and environmental activist from the US, who has campaigned tirelessly from a young age (he first appeared in i-D almost eight years ago) against inaction on the climate crisis and its impact on marginalised communities.
Here, the pair discuss the ways in which they’re Made Strong, misunderstandings about having strength, and their first pair of Dr. Martens.
Niko
Where do you find strength?
I’m extremely close with my family, and I find a lot of strength through them. I come from a proud Mexican immigrant family, and they always gave me the strength to be who I wanted to be. My mother had me at 19 and always would find a way to put food on the table. My grandparents would take care of me when my mother worked. When I told them I wanted to be a singer, they didn’t think twice; they supported me from day one. I’ll always have them to thank for giving me the courage to follow my dreams.
What’s one thing that picks you back up when you’re knocked down?
Music picks me back up when I’m knocked down. Making music or just writing helps me get back into a good mental space. In high school, I temporarily paralysed my right arm in a skateboarding accident. I couldn’t write, but I used voice memos and learned to write with my left hand to keep writing songs. If I hadn’t done that, I would have probably given up on making music. Thankfully, I got feeling and movement back in my arm about five months later.
What do you think people misunderstand about having strength?
What people misunderstand about having strength is thinking you are born with it. I believe you must develop personal strength. The people you surround yourself with and the energy you give to the world will grow or weaken your strength, so you gotta take care of your mental health and physical health equally.
What was your first pair of Dr. Martens?
I got my first pair of Dr. Martens in 6th grade. I still have them. They are my most special shoes because I wore them on La Voz Kids when I was 12. I was so proud I styled myself in a striped pink sweater dress with a Free People lace slip-under and my floral Dr. Martens. All three chairs turned for me, and I still think it was because of my lucky Dr. Martens.
Xiuhtezcatl
Where do you find strength?
I find strength in my ties to my community, to the land, and to my people. Everything I am and everything I have done has been community-made. Throughout both history and my lived experience, I’ve seen that the strength we harness to overcome immense obstacles and create systemic changes comes from the ways we’re able to build collective power. To look deeply at the threads that tie us together and recognise that our futures and our liberation are vastly interconnected. I believe that the root of so much of the injustice in the world comes from the culture of domination, extraction and individualism that shapes much of our reality. It’s empowering to remember that even the smallest acts of connection, community, and kinship can be ways we resist a disconnected status quo and begin to build an alternative, more interconnected world.
What’s one thing that picks you back up when you’re knocked down?
Music is such an important medium for catharsis, healing, and processing for me. It’s often how I cope with the world, internally and externally. I’ve moved through so many of the lows over the last couple of years by writing a lot of the songs on this next album. Songwriting and the inspiration to pursue it is very fickle, though. So sometimes I’ll go months without writing. And in that time, I’ll listen to lots of music and slowly restore my reservoir of inspiration. Learning, practising, and singing traditional songs is another layer of my relationship with music and art that brings me closer to my sense of self and community to help find equilibrium.
What was your first pair of Dr. Martens?
The vegan 2976 Felix Chelsea Boots were the first pair of Docs that became a staple in my wardrobe and have been a big part of my style evolution over the last year.
What do you think people misunderstand about having strength?
I think this campaign with Dr. Martens really exemplifies how our generation is creatively challenging the historical misrepresentation and misconceptions around strength. It’s inspiring to see my generation reframing what it means to have strength through our art, our storytelling, our relationships with our communities and our willingness to be vulnerable, ask questions, practice humility, and think more collectively.
Strength isn’t linear or ever-present. It ebbs and flows. It’s adaptable and fluid. If you look at nature or human history, you can see these patterns. Social movements that challenge entrenched power structures are often successful when they have been imaginative and brought forth big, bold ideas that, at one point, may have been viewed as unthinkable. A world beyond American segregation, beyond Apartheid South Africa, beyond women and people of colour being refused the right to vote, we’re all thought to be impossible at one point in history. But each obstacle was met with an even greater vision of liberation that flowed around these seemingly immovable objects like rivers flowing over rocks and eventually reshaping the landscape entirely. Rather than just fighting against what isn’t working, we find that a more liberated world lies ahead when we organise from a place of love and belief in our ability to create something better than what we see around us. Strength is our imagination, our commitment to each other’s freedom, our ability to link arms with those who don’t look like us in service of a shared vision of a liberated world, and the will to turn our dreams into reality.
