What do hardcore punk, the Sonoran desert and carbon-infused racing trainers have in common? Not much, unless you are Adidas and the Paris-based running brand Satisfy.

The two companies caused a social media stir last week when they teased a new collaboration with a concept called ‘The Circle Pit,’ a pump track in Oro Valley, Arizona which saw a field of elite long-distance athletes running loops as live thrash metal bands moshed on a stage. Even if you were slightly confused by the whole spectacle, the message was clear: this is a collab style-conscious runners won’t want to miss.

Today, Adidas and Satisfy have released the first drop in their partnership – a limited-edition release of the Adizero Adios Pro 4, now available in three exclusive colourways. The trainer is one of the hottest, fastest ‘supershoes’ on the market right now. Unlike most marathon footwear, which are infused with stiff carbon plates, the Adios Pro features carbon-fibre Energyrods, an innovation that makes for a snappy ride and efficiency, mile after mile.

Adidas speediness is complemented with Satisfy’s unorthodox styling; the colourways – army green, brown and black – are inspired by hues found on trails and roads. Satisfy also looked to skateboard culture in its design, from mismatched styling to sun-faded woven mesh fabrics. Reflective stripes, meanwhile, keep runners visible at dusk.

According to the two companies, the Adios Pro marks the first of several drops throughout 2026. The Circle Pit video hinted at an apparel drop, complete with holey logo tees in Satisfy’s signature Moth-Tech. It’s all designed, according to Satisfy, to help athletes ‘unlock the high’ that comes with an intense workout. These drops will ensure that buzz is also high style.

The Adizero Adios Pro 4 Satisfy will be available from May 22, 2026, on satisfyrunning.com and on May 25, 2026 at adidas.com

Designing Belgian shoe label Morobé’s first international flagship was a natural fit for Glenn Sestig Architects. When Wallpaper* visited Glenn Sestig at his home in August 2025, he shared how he nearly pursued a career in fashion before turning to architecture – and how this passion permeates his practice. Sestig has long blurred the lines between creative disciplines: ‘You cannot really separate fashion, architecture, photography, music… they all need each other,’ he told us.

Morobé’s new store opened in June 2025 on Saint-Tropez’s Rue Gambetta – a personal setting for founder Virginie Morobé, who spent her childhood summers in the town. The launch, therefore, marked both a homecoming and a new chapter for the brand that she launched in 2015.

Dubbed the Riviera Residence, the boutique evokes the tranquility of a seaside retreat. Drawing on design language from Morobé’s other locations – such as the Seaside Apartment in Knokke and the Antwerp Townhouse – the store introduces a distinctly Mediterranean identity. Warm earth tones, natural textures and sculptural geometric elements come together to frame each product as a work of art, and a sand-hued, ripple-patterned carpet reinforces the unhurried rhythm of the Riviera. Conceived as a living room, the store offers an intimate shopping experience – a soft escape from the summer heat and a refreshing contrast to the sensory overload of traditional retail.

Sestig, who founded his studio in 1999, is known for a monumental, symmetrical and highly refined aesthetic – a style that he recalls developing as early as age 13, when he was already designing rooms for his parents and grandparents, drawing inspiration from modernist icons like Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Carlo Scarpa. ‘When I go back to see those designs... It's the same way of thinking and designing as I do today. They look like modernism,’ he told Wallpaper*.

These influences are clearly present in the Saint-Tropez flagship, where the architect’s signature urban edge has been softened and reinterpreted through a Mediterranean lens.

’A Santoni product is una meraviglia – a wonder,’ says Giuseppe Santoni. He’s referring to the multitude of steps, countless artisans and centuries of know-how it takes to create a create a single pair of Santoni shoes at the Italian accessories house founded by his father, Andrea Santoni, in Italy’s Le Marche region in 1975 (the younger Santoni is now president and chairman of the brand).

This sense of wonder infuses a new book, Santoni Meraviglia, published by Assouline to celebrate 50 years of the brand. Not simply a retrospective, Andrea Santoni describes it as an ode to the ‘dedication, creativity, and the extraordinary skills of our artisans’, unfolding over image-rich pages that capture both archival ‘treasures’ and more recent creations, and the processes behind them.

Santoni Meraviglia: the new book charting 50 years of Santoni

The book, which is authored by fashion journalist and critic Luke Leitch, also looks towards the town of Corridonia, where Santoni was founded and continues to operate. Located in the Le Marche region in central Italy, a locale synonymous with leatherwork and Made in Italy craft, Santoni Meraviglia offers an inside view of the family-run label.

‘Everyone here is family,’ says Andrea Santoni in the book, noting that every day the entire staff sit down for lunch together at the Corridonia factory. ‘We are recognised in the area as the highest-quality manufacturer,’ he continues.

‘That pride in what we make and what we represent is the glue that bonds us. There are 500 people working together here; around 300 are local, from within ten miles of here. And there are also others who have made the decision to come here and work with us because they want to be among the best of the best.’

Other pages capture Santoni’s creations in gleaming forensic detail or explore the craft behind them – like a signature hand-painting technique which gives a distinct ‘degradé’ effect. The book also explores the eclectic inspirations behind each design: from gilded Renaissance murals to the natural landscapes and colours of Le Marche, a perennial touch point.

‘The idea of the book came about as a natural extension of our desire to mark this extraordinary milestone,’ Giuseppe Santoni tells Wallpaper*. ‘Celebrating 50 years is not just a number – it’s the story of a journey, of values, of craftsmanship passed down through generations. We felt the need to create something that could serve as a lasting testament to these five remarkable decades of Meraviglia.’

‘This book is, in many ways, a biography of the brand,’ he continues. ‘Not in the conventional sense, but as a narrative of our identity, our evolution, and the people and passions that have shaped Santoni over time. It’s a tribute to our heritage, but also a reflection of our vision for the future.’

Santoni Meraviglia is available from from Santoni’s website.

santonishoes.com

In the gamut of men’s footwear, there has always been a particular loucheness to the slipper: the Albert slipper, named after Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, was designed for men of the 19th century to move from dinner table to smoking room without damaging rugs or carpets with the dirt and soot of the street. Oftentimes in velvet – to match tuxedos and smoking jackets – they came to symbolise the suave and the urbane, resurging in midcentury Hollywood among its light-footed leading men.

Another half-century on, the men’s slipper looks set for ubiquity once again. Earlier this month, I was talking to the founder of a London-based skatewear label (and one of fashion’s most influential figures), who told me that he was currently fixated on the slipper: in particular, those produced by the French shirtmaker Charvet on Paris’ storied Place Vendôme, around the corner from The Ritz. Cut from soft suede with their own matching carry case, they are the essence of simplicity: a slip-on style with gently cushioned sole, embossed with the looping Charvet emblem as if a particularly luxurious hotel slipper. He was trying to make his way through every colour, which span classic brown, tan and navy, as well as powdery blue, pink and sanguine red.

Prior to that, Jason Hughes – fashion and creative director of Wallpaper* – had noted to me that the slipper was his shoe of the season, and all he planned to wear during the womenswear shows this past September (a rainy evening on the cobbles of Milan did momentarily highlight the occasional impracticality of the style). His slippers of choice: Prada’s slick, glossy leather mules, which appeared on the house’s menswear runway for A/W 2024 (and returned in a tasselled version for S/S 2025), or a Manolo Blahnik slip-on in mock croc. Another friend, who works at a British heritage house, recently told me he wanted to rough up a pair of the brand’s signature classic velvet slippers – complete with embroidered crest – and wear them on a night out with torn jeans.

If that makes for ‘two’s a coincidence, three’s a trend’, then there was plentiful evidence on the runway, too: at JW Anderson’s A/W 2024 menswear show – which drew inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut – boys wore tasselled slippers with just-sheer tights and socks (as with much of Jonathan Anderson’s output, the result was gleefully strange). The aforementioned Prada mules were part of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ subversive riff on the corporate uniform (guests entered the show through a simulacrum of a nondescript office space), while at Balenciaga, Demna presented a typically twisted take on the slipper, which appeared like a uniform-issue work loafer had been stamped down at the back (they were worn with ballooning track pants).

And despite what might seem like a shift away from the Albert slipper’s formal origins, these new iterations of the style nonetheless come with a suggestion of elegance – even when worn with baggy jeans or trackpants (there is something eternally appealing about the juxtaposition of formality and slouchiness, which conjures off-duty starlets and days after the night before). It makes the slipper a shoe of low effort, high reward, requiring the wearer to simply slip it onto the foot and go – without so much as having to tie up a pair of laces.

Men’s slippers: the Wallpaper* picks

Prada

‘Glossy perfection – best worn poking out from beneath a pair of baggy blue jeans’

Available from Mytheresa, £780

JW Anderson

‘Jonathan Anderson’s ubiquitous chain mule has evolved – now with tassels’

Available from JW Anderson, £520.

The Row

‘Restrained and elegant, The Row’s leather Nicco mule is a forever shoe’

Available from Mr Porter, £1,060.

Balenciaga

‘Stomped down at the back, Balenciaga’s uniform-issue loafer becomes a twisted slipper’

Available from Balenciaga, £820.

Charvet

‘These Charvet slippers are like turning up at a particularly expensive hotel’

Available from Mr Porter, £465.

Albert Escribano, co-founder of shoe and accessory brand Hereu, inspects a row of shelves filled with dusty leather loafers, T-bar sandals and canvas boots. Each is a footnote to a decade of designing and making in Spain. ‘Ten years? That feels a little bit unreal because Hereu started as a personal project,’ he says. ‘We wanted to bring the passion we have for craftmanship together with our own taste to make our thing.’

The ‘we’ Escribano refers to is himself and José Luis Bartolomé. When the idea for Hereu (which translates to ‘heir‘ in Catalan) came to them in 2014, Bartolomé was living in Paris and Escribano in London. The pair – who used to be a couple in life before business – didn’t have any plans for their first collection beyond seeing it as a way of holding onto their roots. Travelling to Spain also became a reason for them to see each other more.

Ten years of Hereu

Today, based out of Barcelona, they find themselves helming a global brand loved for its chic sandals, boots, loafers and growing range of accessories. Their pieces are thoughtfully made in five different factories across Spain without the usual heritage fanfare. To make a pair of Hereu loafers requires between 25-30 stages.

They are hand-sewn using the traditional moccasin construction at a factory that has been in operation since the early 1980s. Inside, piles of butter-yellow shoe lasts wait to have the finest calf leather stretched onto them, bright blue machines are powered up and caked in glue, polish, grease. A team of some 15 staff move deftly around the space wearing International Klein Blue collarless jackets. The supple rock of Hotel California blares from a trio of speakers attached to the walls, their sound muffled by a giant extractor fan.

The production takes its own time and is often full of mess and brute force; a lattice work suede upper is pulled together using pliers before it is glued and gently tapped with a hammer. Soles are bashed onto lasts pin by pin. Men are bent over a workstation, hand-stitching uppers to their soles working in a manner that tries to replicate a machine. They sit at metal benches on wooden dining chairs topped with cushions in faded red and orange, piercing through leather with nylon thread.

Escribano says, ‘Those techniques are foundational; they give the shoes their quality. Craft is something made in the best way it can be. There are no shortcuts. We couldn’t add or take another step out of the process because then you are sacrificing something, maybe durability, maybe comfort. There are many little details that may not seem that important, but they need to be there. That’s what makes the difference.’

The sobriquet of ‘slow fashion’ is now readily applied to almost anything that favours a minimalist design. Even though its pieces are made in traditional, time-honoured ways, Hereu adheres to the usual seasonal demands. It’s not a slow fashion brand.

‘We are also trying to stay away from labels like “craft” or “sustainable” – these things come with the way we work, but it’s not about ticking boxes or a trend. Oftentimes talking about those values loudly can detract from the design, the look of the thing,’ he says. The design process runs to the rhythm of what is possible.

The day-to-day running of the business is a balancing act between speaking to the values of the artisanal and keeping a finger on the pulse of what looks right for today. ‘Sometimes we might think, oh, is this a bit boring? And that’s when we have a good time trying to work it out. Hereu is super easy to understand. Everything looks familiar but is new enough to be interesting.’ You see it, and you see what it's about.

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Kyoto’s rich heritage of craft and making has proven a seductive proposition for international brands in recent months; Le Labo recently opened a Kyoto store dedicated to ’slow perfumery’, while Italian leathergoods brand Valextra has taken over a former teahouse on Hanami-koji Street, combining historic architecture with icons of midcentury Italian design. Meanwhile, Bangkok-based hotel chain Six Senses revealed a breathtaking Kyoto property, its debut in Japan, last month (April 2024) in the Higashiyama district.

Inside John Lobb’s Kyoto store

Joining the line-up this month is the latest store from historic British shoemaker John Lobb, which has recently been refreshing its physical retail offering with a series of sleek new international addresses. These include the opening of a store at 700 Madison Avenue in New York, created alongside French architecture studio Ciguë, following new outposts in Paris and Los Angeles. Kyoto marks the latest expansion, and sees the brand continue a trend of architecturally astute, aesthetically unique stores, choosing one of the city’s traditional wooden ’machiya’ houses for the outpost.

Citing the popularity of John Lobb in the locale – Japan continues to be a large market for the shoemaker, which has been present in the country for over two decades – the store marks its seventh Japanese location. The new Kyoto store is masterminded by architect Teruhiro Yanagihara, whose eponymous studio is based between France and Japan; here, he combines a mood of Japanese minimalism with the midcentury codes that have defined John Lobb’s other recent openings. Entering through a John Lobb-branded version of the ’noren’ curtain, shoppers are greeted with a sleek interior with floating shelving, curving furniture, and traditional pillars that divide the space. A cabinet of curiosities, meanwhile, displays John Lobb’s various soles and lasts.

The opening also comes with a cultural component: a photographic series featuring the lauded Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose 2023 film, Monster, was released to international acclaim (and a slew of nominations, including a win for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival). The latest chapter of ‘Lobb Stories’ – which sees the brand ’take a walk’ with talent from around the world – Kore-eda wanders the ancient streets of Kyoto wearing John Lobb’s ‘William’ shoes, the house’s signature monk-strap design. ’With each step, he seemed to confirm the sensation of the old cobblestones beneath his soles,’ says the brand.

John Lobb Kyoto, 256 Umemotocho, 3 chome, Higashiiru Yamatooji Shinmonzendori, Higashiyamaku, Kyoto, 605-0064. Open now.

johnlobb.com

Japan has a rich history of long-distance running, including the ‘Ekiden’ – road races covering vast distances over multiple days, the first taking place in 1917 from Kyoto to Tokyo. And, while contemporary Japanese runners now likely use the high-stack, bouncing-on-air carbon-plated sneakers that have since become the norm, a sleek new collaboration between Issey Miyake and New Balance returns to the ‘barefoot’, minimalist running sneakers of the 2010s, promising a feeling of ’sensuous physicality and barefoot mobility’, according to Issey Miyake designer Satoshi Kondo.

Indeed, the sneaker – titled the Issey Miyake × New Balance MT10O – looks back to the MT10, a minimalist trail running sneaker that was first introduced in 2011 as part of the Boston-based sportswear brand’s ‘Minimus’ series. With minimal padding and cushioning and a slim ‘close-to-the-ground’ sole, the new riff sees the original design reinterpreted by Kondo and his team in monochrome white, black and blue-green. Kondo says he was inspired by the ’natural and honest shape’ of the sneaker, which reflected the house’s S/S 2024 collection, where the design first appeared.

‘Sensuous physicality’: Issey Miyake x New Balance MT10O

In terms of construction, the Issey Miyake × New Balance MT10O combines aerodynamic panels of mesh with leather, while cord shoelaces recall trail-running sneakers and hiking boots. The outsole, which is designed for ’grip and durability’, is made for off-road and trail running, created by Italian rubber and sole expert Vibram (the ‘drop’ is just 4mm, designed for a midfoot strike). New Balance says the overall impression is to feel as if you are running without shoes. It is completed with a co-branded logo and a special shoe case to reflect the sneaker’s limited-edition status.

The partnership follows a slew of recent collaborations between New Balance and fashion labels – from Junya Watanabe to Aimé Leon Dore, Todd Snyder and Kith. Most recently, a collaboration with Miu Miu – for the brand’s S/S 2024 collection, a suede style with double-colour laces – has proved a sell-out hit, with re-sale sites selling the co-branded sneaker at almost triple its £780 retail price.

The sneakers launch in Japan on 15 May 2024, with a global release to follow on 14 June 2024.

isseymiyake.comnewbalance.co.uk

These gravity-defying pumps by Santoni are defined by their architectural rigour: the near-impossible slant of its sculpted heel gives the effect that the wearer is in constant forward motion, while a V-cut silhouette – narrowing to a knife-point at the toe – is designed to carve and elongate the ankle.

Held in place with the slimmest of straps – the buckle delicately etched with the ‘Santoni’ emblem – they are nonetheless engineered with the same ergonomic precision that the Italian shoemaker is built on. Founded in 1975 by Andrea and Rosa Santoni in the Marche region of Italy – a locale synonymous with shoemaking for over a century – Santoni now employs over 700 artisans, each working by hand to create the house’s growing library of men’s and women’s shoes.

Indeed, the brand’s S/S 2024 collection – first shown during Milan Fashion Week S/S 2024 last September – looked towards the Marche region, and its dramatic natural landscapes, for inspiration (a journey through ‘the motherland of the brand’, described Santoni). Spanning the undulating peaks of the Apennines, rolling hills, vineyards and olive groves, as well as the azure-blue Adriatic sea, ‘sensual and sinuous’ footwear was imagined in shades of delicate purple (inspired by the Malva flower), aquamarine, burnt shades of brown and ‘puro’ white.

A version of this article appears in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Discover Santoni’s S/S 2024 collection at santonishoes.com.

Fashion by Kris Bergfeldt.

John Lobb might be known for the refined classicism of its signature leather brogues and Oxfords, but a recent focus on the sneaker sees the British shoemaker bring its century-and-a-half expertise to sportier terrain. Among the new styles – made using the same intricate 190-step process as any other pair of John Lobb shoes – are the Foundry sneaker, in-part inspired by a pair of classic sport Derbys from the 1920s, and the Dover, with smooth, undulating lines and hidden ghillie laces. Each seems to encapsulate John Lobb’s aim ‘to equip its wearer for a lifetime in movement’, a maxim inspired by the namesake founder’s own 1851 journey on foot from the Cornish coastline to London (by 1863, the young Lobb was creating footwear for the Prince of Wales, before opening a bespoke atelier on Regent Street in 1866). 

The slip-on Cannon sneaker with elastic fastening, a recent addition for A/W 2022, takes a similarly ergonomic approach. Built from the last and sole of the Foundry sneaker – here updated with an all-leather spoiler and discrete John Lobb logo on the back tab – the upper’s sleek, minimal design is a demonstration of the brand’s expertise in leathercraft (indeed, the effortless design belies the several days it takes to create each pair). The Cannon was made with comfort and performance in mind, though cross-country treks or days spent on foot are not a requirement of wear – you’ll derive just as much satisfaction from the way these sneakers look. 

A version of this story appeared in the January 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

johnlobb.com

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s tenure as creative director of Dior has shown her to be an avid student of the house archive – and, indeed, of Christian Dior himself, whose fixations and obsessions have been refracted through the Italian designer’s contemporary, and distinctly feminist, lens. 

For her A/W 2022 collection, Chiuri melded riffs on the historic silhouettes synonymous with the house – a version of Christian Dior’s 1947 ‘Bar Jacket’ was turned inside out, its padding exposed, for example – with a vividly futuristic sensibility. Garments were installed with illuminated tubes of wires, or overlaid with technical corsetry and gilets created in collaboration with Italian start-up D-Air Lab, the Dynamic Autonomy and Intelligent Robotics Lab (such innovations included air-bag technology and temperature-controlling elements). Dior described the collection as ‘suspended’ between past, present and future. 

Past, present, future: ‘62-22’ shoes by Dior

Such juxtapositions extended to the footwear, which saw Chiuri look towards the ornate footwear that Roger Vivier designed for the house in the early 1960s (in an early act of fashion collaboration, Vivier worked with Christian Dior for close to a decade, meeting the designer in 1953). The particular pair that Chiuri referenced to create the just-released ‘62-22’ shoe – its name a reference to the original shoe’s year of creation, 1962 – is notable for its intricate stitching and curved ‘comma’ heel (‘The innovative heel treatment adds tension and even a feeling of incredulity to his designs,’ says the Met Museum’s Costume Institute of a similar 1961 pair in its collection).

Here, the midcentury elegance of the original design is given a distinctive update with an overlaid strap in technical ultralight neoprene, which wraps around the ankle and is secured with anti-slip fastening inspired by D-Air Lab’s research. Fluorescent yellow stitching, the house says, is inspired by ‘the world of motorcycling’. Together with the various traditional embroidery – from mimosa flowers to a coral motif and sewn-on blue stones – the ‘62-22’ is an ode to Parisian savoir-faire, traditional and futuristic at once. 

Watch how Dior’s 62-22 shoes are made in the short film by Mélinda Triana below.

INFORMATION

dior.com

For almost a century, the Florentine house of Salvatore Ferragamo has provided an array of luxurious and ever-evolving footwear for its international devotees – from the dramatic (a 1938 golden sandal with vertiginous rainbow wedge heel for Hollywood royalty Judy Garland) to the quotidien (their leather loafer, with signature Gancini buckle, which remains one the house’s most enduring styles). 

The latest arrivals, revealed this week, hope to take a similar place in the Ferragamo canon: an elegant new series of sneakers, which meld the house’s extraordinary dedication to craft with the comfort and ease of traditional running shoes. Designed to be worn across genders, they riff on vintage designs from the 1960s and 1970s, albeit reimagined in contemporary style, utilising high-tech fabrications and a bold and vivid use of colour (in another nod to the past, one rainbow-hued sole references the aforementioned house classic worn by Garland). Another is decorated with the 1950s-designed Gancini emblem, a motif drawn from the looping wrought-iron hooks originally made to tether horses on the historic Palazzo Ferragamo in Florence, where the house is based.

But the varied models offer more than simply aesthetically pleasing design; instead, they also arrive with serious sustainable credentials – or, in the house’s words, a ‘responsible essence’. Crafted using ‘a mix of high-tech and responsible materials’, each pair is crafted from an Econyl upper (Ecoynl is 100 percent regenerated from fishing nets and nylon waste), suede inserts from manufacturing scraps, and leather which utilises a chrome-free tanning process. Elsewhere, threads are constructed from 100 percent post-consumer recycled polyester, while felt details are also made from recycled polyester fibres. 

A feeling of lightness and comfort – defining principles of the entirety of Ferragamo’s near-century-long output – completes the various sneakers, each style finished with a customised tread, from heel to toe.

INFORMATION

ferragamo.com

Japan-born, Amsterdam-based designer Teppei Sugaya’s work rolls an eclectic array of influences into one refined craft. His time spent studying in Japan, before travelling across Europe to work for various brands – from London to Italy – has resulted in an approach which lies between the eccentric and the honed. Sugaya’s latest project, beginning in 2021, sees the designer collaborate with Italian shoemaker Superga on the appropriately named ‘Artifact’ collection, which plucks details from the historic brand’s archives to formulate distinctive silhouettes which celebrate over 100 years of craft (‘Artifact’ derives its name from ‘artefatto’, which means the equivalent in Italian). A chunky cross-hatched bumper sole is influenced by their 1970 shoes, and the simple canvas upper maintains a relationship with Superga’s iconic 2750 style, in production since 1911.

‘Artifact’ by Superga

The latest collection for S/S 2022 arrives in high or low-top styles, spanning earthy, muted shades (greens, greys) and more vivid flashes of orange, blue and white, while a hefty structure gives the design weight – as at home in rugged landscapes and dusty workshops as a busy cityscape. With a sturdiness akin to walking boots, paired with the minimalist approach echoed in Superga’s other collections, the ‘Artifact’ offering provides a change in pace to the shoemaker’s usual tennis-inspired silhouettes and canvas regulars. 

The S/S 2022 release is a continuation of Superga’s celebration of over 100 years of shoemaking (in 1911, they began to create shoes in Turin with vulcanised rubber soles). In light of their age, the brand have dedicated a series of videos to highlighting international artisans in care of their craft. For this latest collection, a new video shows woodworkers Dru Plumb and Barnaby Ash of Ash & Plumb at work in Sussex. Turning wood to create classic, sculptural forms and stitching ribbons of leather into cracks in their wooden vessels; the film delicately draws a line between the crafts of woodworking and leather stitching, celebrating the production of objects with a story.

Watch the ‘Artifact’ by Superga campaign film below.

 INFORMATION

superga.co.uk

Intricate feats of savoir-faire have defined Givenchy since its beginnings in 1952, the house’s namesake founder Hubert de Givenchy learning the art of couture – whereby each garment is sewn entirely by hand by a dedicated team of ‘petites mains’ – from masters of the post-war era, Jacques Fath and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Seven decades on, the house’s current creative director Matthew M Williams brings this same fastidious approach to his collections. Tracing the maison’s legacy through a sleek, contemporary lens, he meshes tough elements of metal hardware with lean silhouettes and smatterings of embellishment. Those who follow the designer on Instagram can see these imaginative leaps: Williams posts galleries that flip between images of Hubert de Givenchy’s original designs and his own riffs on the house’s archive.

The story behind the Givenchy TK-360 sneaker

But Williams is also a designer for whom technical innovation is key, and his own take on Parisian savoir-faire is epitomised in a new sneaker, the TK-360, shown here on a sculptural artwork created for the house by British multimedia artist Ewan Macfarlane. The shoe’s unique shape and fit – sleek and sporty, with a bold rounded back – are achieved from a singular piece of stretch-knit fabric, crafted directly onto the custom-moulded sole (it even extends over the sneaker’s underside, giving the TK-360 a unique tread and entirely monochrome appearance). 

Initial colours include classic black and optic white, as well as more vivid shades of acid yellow, graphite grey, camel, and pink. Williams calls it his ‘dream shoe’. ‘There is a sense of savoir-faire for sportswear created at a fashion company like Givenchy that is different from a sportswear company, but no less rigorous,’ says Williams. Of the unique design, whereby the knit tread will eventually show signs of wear, he adds, ‘Clothes and accessories can have a life where they evolve and change and take on history. The more these shoes wear, the more history they have.’ 

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the July 2022 issue of Wallpaper*. Subscribe today!

givenchy.com
@givenchy
@matthewmwilliams

‘I wanted something erotic, psychedelic, touching on Surrealism,’ says Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson of the inspiration behind the Spanish house’s S/S 2022 womenswear collection, first shown in October of last year in Paris. American visual artist Man Ray, who elevated and transformed mundane found objects – a ticking metronome, an iron, the scroll of a violin – into a series of ‘readymade’ sculptures during the 1920s, was the inspiration for Anderson’s striking, seemingly pared-back stilettos: heels formed from the head of a rose, a lilac bar of soap, a red bottle of nail polish, a candle dripping with wax (one pair even took the form of a cracked eggshell, each yellow yolk appearing to spill out onto the runway beneath). ‘There’s an interesting irony within the readymade,’ the designer says.

When taking in someone’s outfit, we’re naturally inclined to turn our attention to the ground first. ‘The eye usually reads a fashion look from the bottom upwards,’ Anderson says, but for S/S 2022, he asks his audience to change its perspective. At Loewe’s Paris Fashion Week show – held in the equestrian training arena of the historic La Garde Républicaine, on this occasion entirely stripped of decoration to become a sparse white space ‘resembling a blank piece of paper’ – the brand’s models appeared from a trapdoor in the catwalk, encouraging an audience to take in their ensembles from the head down. As the viewer’s eye traces the silhouette, it is surprised by a final surrealist flourish featured at the sole of the foot.

‘Everything appears normal, but it’s not really,’ Anderson explains of the choice. ‘I didn’t want to create a collection that was completely grounded in reality’. 

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the May 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands now and available to subscribers.

loewe.com

The Palette Room

When Kristina Blahnik, CEO of Manolo Blahnik and a trained architect with experience in exhibition design, describes her perfect vision for The Manolo Blahnik Archives: ‘A New Way of Walking’, she references not a physical building, a modern or classical icon or a structure constrained by convention, but something akin to a jukebox. ‘Like a record player with stacks of vinyl that can pull out the record you want to play and drop it onto a turntable,’ she explains. ‘A stack of cylindrical spaces that you can dive into, coming out of one and into another.’

This celebratory Manolo Blahnik world – designed to mark the accessory label's 50th anniversary – does not exist in the physical realm, but as a virtual sphere, described by Kristina as an ‘anti-space' or ‘blank canvas', spanning different ‘rooms’, decades, themes and aesthetic milestones. It has been more than 18 months in the making. The ambitious and innovative project – democratic, global, and easily accessible and navigable – brings together archive sketches, film clips, unseen photographs, portraits and newspaper cuttings. It has been created in collaboration with Rōnin, an independent digital design studio based in Amsterdam, and curated alongside Judith Clark, the curator and fashion exhibition-maker who first met Mr Blahnik in 2006, when working on a show dedicated to his long-time friend and Italian style icon, Anna Piaggi, for London’s V&A museum.

‘I gravitate towards the colourful, complex and dramatic shoes in our archive,' says Kristina, who, back in 1999, undertook the project of photographing the label's historic range of shoes before digitising Blahnik's then-archive in 2006. ‘Judith is an incredibly powerful voice in fashion history and academia,’ she adds. ‘She helped us bring an objective eye to the project.'

Step into Manolo Blahnik’s magnificent virtual world

The Manolo Blahnik Archives: ‘A New Way of Walking’, is divided into five immersive, kaleidoscopic and time-travelling spaces. The Palette Room boasts 80 Blahnik sketches arranged in a spectrum of colour – including the tassel-swathed 2001 ‘Cadiz’ mule and the 1990 ‘Loggia’, a stiletto that laces up around the ankle with leather ivy – in celebration of the designer's renowned fondness for vibrancy. The 70s Room, lined floor to ceiling with a lustrous red curtain, hones in on how the style of Mr Blahnik – someone who began designing shoes quite unintentionally at the encouragement of Diana Vreeland – has evolved, pulling out, for example, the 1979 buckled ‘Marlene’ pump as a style that has inspired countless other creations. 

The Gold Room hosts some of the designer's most exuberant designs on digital plinths and in mounted frames, accented with 18ct gold, pearls, and feathers dipped in gold. Marking his Midas touch, it also features contemporary golden silhouettes, from fringed boots to crystal-embellished mules, that are part of the brand’s 50th anniversary capsule collection.

Clark was on hand to help Kristina and Monolo Blahnik's archive team streamline the sketches and shoe styles that are featured across the brand's virtual world. ‘I realised that the sketches I was drawn to were ones that somehow performed a double task – they were wonderful drawings, but they also revealed what I love about Mr Blahnik’s work, and that is the almost infinite references that are translated into shoes,' says Clark. She also recorded an audio guided tour for each of the rooms and developed a storytelling layer, with explanatory text that hovers over different objects. ‘What I concentrated on was to show some of the breadth of his passions; art, history, film, food, gardens, it is endless, and in a virtual space it is absolutely unpredictable what the visitor will see. I love the fact that one will come away with a story about Versailles, another [with a story] about a garden, another [with a story] about a Venetian chopine.'

Two rooms also touch on the close relationships that Mr Blahnik has cultivated over the last half-decade. In the Friendships room, the brand celebrates lasting role models and friends, including Dianna Vreelend, Anna Wintour, Tina Chow, Grace Coddington and Anna Piaggi, to whom Blahnik dedicated two shoe styles. The ambitious and intimate Our Family room features a portrait of every single person who works at the family-run brand, shaped into a pointillist physiognomy of Mr Blahnik himself. The portraits were photographed in person and via Zoom, in the US, UK, Paris and Switzerland. ‘The experience of everyone having their photograph taken was such a community moment,' Kristina says. ‘People in our factory were baking and bringing in cakes in the shapes of shoes.’

The power of Manolo Blahnik Archives: ‘A New Way of Walking’, lies not only in the incredible attention to detail dedicated to celebrating the brand's remarkable history – accented with personal touches like soundbites from Mr Blahnik, and digital flourishes of his pencil or watercolour paintbrush – but in the future possibilities it encourages. ‘He's never wanted to exhibit his shoes under glass,' Kristina says. ‘The doors of our archive should be blown open, for people to explore. This isn't an exhibition that will only be open in one place for a short period of time. This is a modular concept which can cater to new spaces, stories and cultural moments. We are launching the very beginning of a new journey.'

INFORMATION

thearchives.manoloblahnik.com

You might not expect that t-shirts can be made with a waste fibre formed from the shells of Canadian snow crabs, but when you consider that Allbirds incorporate sugarcane, castor bean oil and eucalyptus into their eco-aware designs, it’s vital to let your imagination run wild.

The San Francisco-based brand, whose soft streamlined sneakers have become synonymous with timeless, sustainable design – and who launched a synthetics-subverting performance shoe and range of renewable underwear this year – has added another enduring product category to its repertoire. Allbirds' apparel collection features t-shirts made using Trino XO – another innovative fabric in the brand's environmentally aware arsenal – formed from Merino wool, eucalyptus and Chitosan, a fibre formed from naturally discarded crab shells.

Allbirds’ footwear features essential silhouettes that have been engineered with an eco-aware design mindset. The Dasher, the brand’s first sports shoe, which launched in April, forgoes traditional petroleum-derived synthetics, featuring a 3D knitted upper crafted from eucalyptus fibres, a soft inner formed from Merino wool and a midsole made using Sweetfoam, a sugarcane-derived EVA. The four-and-a-half year old label has now applied the same precise premise to its men's and women's apparel collection, which features cardigans, puffer jackets and jumpers. ‘Does the world need another t-shirt?' says Tim Brown, Allbirds' co-founder and CEO. ‘The short answer is no, unless it's better.'

Take the brand’s puffer jacket, which has an exterior formed from a blend of Merino wool and Tencel with a fluorine-free water repellent, and is insulated with recycled polyester. Or its t-shirt, made with a fabrication evolved from Trino, the wool and eucalyptus blend found in Allbirds’ socks and underwear. Trino XO incorporates Chitosan, which has anti-odour qualities. ‘Traditionally anti-microbial treatments use an extractably mined silver or zinc,’ Brown explains. ‘We found a waste stream off the seafood industry which we were able to substitute.’

Allbirds has devised a consumer-friendly life assessment tool to quantify the carbon footprint of its creations. The footprint of its Dasher shoe is 9 kg of carbon dioxide per pair, estimated by the brand to be nearly 30% lower than the average trainer. ‘Traditionally, with production, you’re worrying about what something looks like, what it does and the cost,’ Brown explains. ‘We think carbon footprint is the fourth variable.’ Allbirds’ apparel is also labelled according to its carbon number. Its t-shirt has a footprint approximately 20% lower than a standard polyester design, with 7.1 kg of carbon for a men’s and 6.3 kg for a women’s, in part because it requires fewer washes throughout its lifecycle. ‘Using carbon footprint as a design constraint can really be incorporated in creative problem solving and make products different.’

‘I think designing with a carbon number is going to become a really interesting way to talk about the topic of sustainability in the future,’ Brown adds of the numerical minset behind Allbirds apparel launch. ‘We don’t have all the answers, but the different tweaks you could bring in to reduce that number year on year really represents the future.’

INFORMATION

allbirds.co.uk

Hot on the heels of Bang & Olufsen’s new E8 Sport earphones comes this collaboration with Swiss running tech specialists, On. The result is a discretely branded edition of the E8 with subtle styling cues to match up with On’s newest road running shoe, the Cloudboom.

For the Cloudboom, On collaborated closely with two established marathon runners, the Canadian Rachel Cliff and British athlete Chris Thompson. In addition to the ‘CloudTech’ layered sole that uses superfoam cushioning, the new shoe features On’s signature engineered mesh on the upper. ‘We always work with athletes to develop our products,’ says Edouard Coyon at On. ‘We have only one ambition, which is to help push the athletes forward, so they can accelerate in all conditions.’

The philosophy of high-tech materials and contemporary styling is one that resonated with Bang & Olufsen’s design team. ‘Music plays an important role in stimulating physical activity,’ says Sondre Barkli, Bang & Olufsen’s Global Product Manager, noting that the E8 was already highly prized by runners. The evolved E8 Sport is distinguished by full weatherproofing, enhanced Bluetooth 5.1 tech and seven-hour battery life, as well as the ability to tailor the in-ear fit. ‘We wanted to focus on fitness and running as a category and On shared our core values,’ Barkli continues as he reveals a new limited edition E8 Sport that’s designed to pair perfectly with your Cloudbooms.

‘Music plays an important role in stimulating physical activity,’ says Bang & Olufsen’s global product manager

The details are subtle but on point, starting with the embossed logo on the earphones’ silicone case, with On’s signature cloud print concealed beneath the lid of the case — just as you get in an On shoe box. The transparent green silicone earpieces reveal the collaboration’s motto — ‘the sound of unstoppable’ – and there’s an aesthetic synergy that carries through with the high-tech stylings of the Cloudboom. For runners looking to get every last drop of performance from their tech as well as their own aching muscles, this is a partnership that makes sense.

INFORMATION

Beoplay E8 Sport On Edition, £300, bang-olufsen.com
Cloudboom, £170, on-running.com

Parisian boutique The Broken Arm and outdoor outfitters Salomon have, for the last five years, joined forces on exclusive footwear styles. Their latest – a riff on an alpine trail boot, purpose-built for snowy mountainous terrain, and so a sturdy option year-round, including for men’s or women’s winter boots – has been released as most of Europe emerges out of lockdown into a strange new world. Salvatore Caputo photographed florist Louis-Géraud Castor wearing the Salomon XA-ALPINE at a plant nursery in the Ile-de-France region, 20 minutes outside of Paris.

‘We wanted to shoot these shoes in the context of nature,’ Guillaume Steinmetz, co-founder of The Broken Arm says. ‘We’re constantly exchanging ideas with Louis, who has been working on floral arrangements for the store for the last three years. We’ve been talking about the small, local producers that he works with and so we decided to follow him around his usual work environment. We didn’t want to just go there with a model; we wanted things to be authentic.’

‘Imagine 20,000 bulbs of tulips planted in October that have bloomed only to have been thrown away,’ Castor says, reflecting on the devastating impact that lockdown has had on his industry. As news of the pandemic hit France, Castor went to his studio and prepared hundreds of bouquets that he left in the street for people to take home. A bunch of Strelitzias (Bird of Paradise) were left behind to dry out, along with a cluster of sky blue Muscaris: ‘I couldn’t throw those away. I wanted to see how they would rot,’ he says. ‘Flowers live and fade, form a sort of patina during the week.’ In the spirit of our turbulent times, they transform.

INFORMATION

the-broken-arm.com; salomon.com

Despite the sneaker collaboration becoming a trope of contemporary life, there are still instances in which seamless unions can surprise and delight. One such example is the latest team effort from Koio, the disruptive unisex sneaker label based in New York. Known for bringing together luxurious materials and quality craftsmanship to create its sophisticated, versatile styles, the label recently joined forces with the Los Angeles-based sculptor Bradley Duncan to create a limited edition sneaker that cuts a strong figure.

Born in Ohio, Duncan is known for his transformations of land, metal and organic materials into sculptural works of art. Trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, his works tend towards simplified geometric forms that evoke order, balance and form in its references of both modern and ancient architecture. Influenced as much by the design principles of the Shaker community, which originates from his home state of Ohio, as the vast geography and native flora and fauna of his current state of California, Duncan’s sculptures and site-specific environments create an arresting impact through their austerity.

Transformed into footwear, Duncan’s aesthetic has been adapted into a pared-back high-top sneaker that pairs a sandy-hued natural pebble leather with a clear rubber sole. Leather cord shoelaces enhance the linearity of the shoe’s details and architectural silhouette. Each topped off with a miniature version of Duncan’s carved triangular ‘Waveform’ sculptures, which has been seamlessly placed along the laces of every shoe, the earthy sneaker brings an element of elevation to everyday wear. 

About adapting his creative process to something wearable, Duncan says, ‘I approached the shoe design process the same way I start most of our studio projects, with a vision. The vision for the shoe collaboration was illustrated through a collection of images I have taken over the past few years. Images ranged from my finished sculptures to natural phenomena. Koio translated and then we fine-tuned the details.’

‘Bradley has a unique approach that resonates a lot with Koio,’ adds Koio’s co-founder Johannes Quodt. ‘He uses natural materials and colors and transforms them into wonderfully geometric shapes. In that way, he creates an exciting contrast between the origin of his pieces and their final state.’ 

INFORMATION

bradleyduncan.com

koio.co

Swedish design brand Magniberg approaches its bedding collections as it does the components of a wardrobe. The four-year old label combines distinct fabrics like washed jersey, silk and sateen, layering up fabrics of various weights and finishes as you would the different material elements of an outfit. It’s a sartorial synergy then, that Magniberg – co-founded by fashion designer Bengt Thornefors, whose CV includes stints at Acne Studios, Saint Laurent and Kostas Murkudis – has found a brilliant bedfellow in Swedish fashion brand Our Legacy, creating a range of sleep inducing items made using upcycled shirt fabrics.

‘My friends at Our Legacy always push the envelope, and it totally made sense to collaborate with them on a project about bringing new life into exclusive leftover fabrics,’ says Thornefors of the offering, which includes snuggly duvets in a black overdyed seersucker cotton and unisex pyjamas in candy floss coloured floral lace. Our Legacy is a leader when it comes to upcycling-focused projects. Its ‘Workshop’ retail platform champions the reuse of deadstock fabrics and garments, and projects include a series of customised Artek stools sold at Dover Street Market Ginza. 

‘If one is to produce something and put it out into a world where far too many things already exist, it needs to be desirable,’ says Jockum Hallin, founder Our Legacy, of the cosy yet fashion-forward collaborative pieces. ‘We have merged our world with Magnibergs'. The outcome is fun, progressive and beautiful. It´s a world I want to bring home’. With these eco-aware, alluring items, you’ll be feeling house proud in no time too. You might also want to bring forward bedtime. 

Left, Adidas: Adidas partnered with non-profit Parley for the Oceans to produce a range of sneakers with uppers of woven recycled ocean plastic. ‘Alphaedge 4D Parley’, £250. Right, top, Vivobarefoot: promoting a back-to-nature way of walking, Vivobarefoot also use a number of sustainably-produced materials, including an algae-based foam called Bloom. ‘Ultra III Bloom’, £75. Upper-middle, Everlane: this e-commerce darling’s ‘carbon neutral’ sneaker uses natural and recycled rubber, recycled plastic, and leather from the ‘world’s cleanest tannery’. ‘The Trainer’, $98. Lower-middle, Novesta: founded in Slovakia in 1939, Novesta uses natural rubber soles, which are machine-pressed on cotton or linen uppers, without using toxic glues. ‘Star Master Suede’, €69. Bottom, Allbirds: with a $1.4bn valuation and celebrity investors, Allbirds rivals Veja as the poster brand for sustainable sneakers. Its materials include eucalyptus fibre. ‘Tree Toppers’, £115.

Training shoes, sneakers or even kicks if you prefer, have become a key territory in the sustainable fashion turf war. The fashion industry’s environmental impact – it produces more carbon emissions than international flights and shipping combined – is increasingly under scrutiny. And trainers leave a particularly large and unpleasant footprint, as they use a lot of different and ‘problematic’ materials – leather, nylon, synthetic rubber, plastic and viscose – and involve a number of different manufacturing processes – injection moulding, foaming, heating, cutting and sewing. That means a lot of resource-munching making and logistical toing and froing up and down the supply chain. Where they are made also matters.

Over three-quarters of the world’s trainers are produced in China, where manufacturing is still – despite some positive moves – vastly reliant on fossil fuels. (If you want to get to grips with the complex sustainability issues around sneaker production, check out the excellent Better Shoes Foundation website.)

For sustainably-minded entrepreneurs then, sneaker-making leaves a lot of room for footprint-reducing manoeuvres. Perhaps the most visible of these niche players (and getting less niche by the day) is Paris-based Veja. The brand was launched by childhood friends Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion in 2005. With backgrounds in banking, neither was, by their own admission, a ‘sneaker head’. But intent on a sustainable business, they understood that sneakers was a market where they could make a big impact.

Veja’s shoes, mostly plain white and with a distinctive coloured V, are entirely produced in Brazil. The brand works with local organic cotton producers, Amazonian rubber farmers and a factory that turns plastic water bottles into thread for uppers. Crucially, argue the founders, most Veja customers are only dimly aware of its sustainability credentials, if at all. It has prospered largely on good looks. And it has really prospered over the last three years, with sales up 70 per cent in 2018 to €30m. Recent launches include a collaboration with Rick Owens and its first running trainer, the Condor.

A more recent launch, but also gaining attention, is Allbirds. A favourite of tech workers and off-duty celebs, the brand was co-founded in San Francisco two years ago by Tim Brown, a former professional New Zealand soccer player, and Joey Zwillinger, an engineer and expert in renewable materials. They went public with just one shoe design, with a seamless superfine merino wool upper. Brown’s fundamental idea was to make a shoe using fewer processes but in better and more sustainable materials. The brand has since added a eucalyptus-based fibre and a sugarcane-based rubber to the mix. It has reportedly sold $100m-worth of shoes and the company is valued at over a $1bn.

Launched in the US in 2010 and another $1bn-plus brand, Everlane is built on selling stylishly low-key basics online (though it now has stores in New York and San Francisco) and supply-chain transparency. This year, it unveiled a sneaker sub-brand, Tread, with ‘The Trainer’, in recycled plastic and rubber and the lowest-impact leather it could find.

These brands now head a list of producers, each with their own approach to making sustainable sneakers. All, though, including Veja and Allbirds, remain relative minnows in the industry. It should also be noted that all have concentrated their efforts on simple ‘leisure’ shoes. The more complex mechanics and materials used in performance shoes, particularly cushioning synthetic foam, make them a significant challenge in terms of sustainable manufacturing.

The industry’s real heavyweights, Nike and Adidas, have made moves towards sustainable manufacturing. Nike’s Flyknit material reduces waste and its Flyleather is made from recycled leather scraps. The brand says over 75 per cent of its shoes now use some recycled materials and it is by far the industry’s biggest user of recycled polyester. Adidas, meanwhile, has partnered with campaign group Parley for the Oceans to produce a range of shoes with uppers made from recycled ocean waste and has committed to transitioning fully to recycled plastic by 2024. This year it launched ‘Futurecraft Loop’, its first fully recyclable sneaker, made entirely of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), which will be available in 2020.

In a way, the big players have been smartly outmanoeuvred by the sustainable start-up brands, not stuck with ‘legacy’ production systems that take time to re-engineer. The sportswear giants also produce far bigger ranges and in far bigger numbers and have to make sure that any sustainable innovation is scalable, that production can be ramped up without massively increasing costs. Ultimately, however, advances they do make will have a far bigger impact.

Though it doesn’t release official figures, it is estimated that Converse produces up to 100 million pairs of the ‘Chuck Taylor All Star Classic’ a year. That’s 100 pairs of ‘Chucks’ sold for every pair of Vejas. This summer, Converse launched three upcycled or recycled versions of the ‘Chuck Taylor’. One, a partnership with Thread International, is produced using recycled PET from plastic bottles; another, this time a partnership with vintage clothes specialist Beyond Retro, features a recycled denim upper; while a third uses recycled waste canvas from its own mills.

The simplicity of the fundamental ‘Chuck Taylor’ design, now a century old, means Converse can make big shifts working with just a few of its key manufacturers. And crucially, ask them to do it without investing in expensive new machinery. Converse is working around the way its shoes are currently made, but these new processes already create 20 per cent less carbon and use 30 per cent less water. And while the new Renew range is being made in relatively small numbers initially – in the hundreds of thousands – Converse is looking at ways to ramp that up and reduce costs, and is investigating other sustainable materials.

All of these brands are conscious that a sustainability promise alone isn’t enough to seal the sale. But as Converse acknowledges, it’s not just external consumer demand and pressure that is driving the move to more sustainable production. That pressure is also coming from inside the company and major brands now understand that attracting and keeping the best young talent means committing to better behaviour and clear sustainability strategies. Doing nothing is no longer an option. 

As originally featured in the September 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*246)

When you’re a relatively young challenger running shoe brand taking on the world’s second best-known monster duopoly, you need to play it smart. No amount of clever technology and natty design will worry Nike and Adidas unless your brand message starts to cut through. Without mega-buck marketing budgets and A-list athlete sponsorships, nine-year old Swiss brand On has got high and minimal to tell at least part of its story. This summer it landed a suitably advanced looking mountain hut 2,500 metres up Piz Lunghin in Switzerland’s Engadine valley.

One of the fastest growing sports brands in the world and known for its distinctive exposed-pod soles, an innovation it calls ‘CloudTech’, On was founded by triathlete Olivier Bernhard and friends Caspar Coppetti and David Allemann. All three grew up in the Swiss Alps and, they say, put together a business plan for their nascent brand walking in the mountains above the Engadine valley.

The hut though is the work of Thilo Brunner, On’s head of design. (Brunner, was until recently a professor at Ecal, leading the MA in product design and collaborating with Barber Osgerby, the Bouroullecs, amongst others. Allemann says that after talking to a number of shoe-design specialists, they went looking for someone who could bring a new take to running shoe design.)

The sharply-angled mountain outpost, clad in high-polish corrugated metal, is only reachable on foot, a 700 m climb. It packs in (just about) two floors, a stove and toilet with a glass façade offering views across the valley. (On has restricted access to competition winners though, unsurprisingly, it has attracted a fair amount of attention from walkers and a clamour for guest privileges).

Built in light local plywood, powered by solar panels and using only collected rain water or water from mountain streams – Pix Linguin is the watershed of three of Europe’s major river systems – the hut should leave no trace when it is dismantled this autumn. Alleman says they hope to re-erect the hut next summer, either in its current spot or a new lookout and is considering building other versions to land in the US or Asia.

On have used the hut’s installation to announce the launch of its Cloudrock Waterproof walking boots and a reworked trail running shoe, the Cloudventure Peak, as the brand pushes beyond road running and into the hills and valleys.

On shoes and apparel are now sold in 6,000 specialist running stores in 50 countries. Headquartered in Zurich it has outposts in Portland, Yokohama and Melbourne, and in 2021 will move into a brand-new Zurich HQ building. Allemann says the company will double its staff numbers over the next three or four years to 800 people. ‘On has a very distinct culture,’ he says, ‘and how to maintain that when we are growing so quickly, moving from a one-floor office to a new one with several floors is a big topic. We’re looking into how to combine all the things we do daily at work like workshops, doing sports together and just being creative. At the same time we’re bringing selected partners into the new office space, we want to create a hub in Zurich for creativity, for startups and incubators.’

Brunner meanwhile is currently moving into a new separate ‘maker space’. ‘It’s a proper design maker lab,’ he says. ‘Computer-aided design is really important in design of course but I wanted to take the computer-generated work back to the work-bench to make design development much faster. If a designer has an idea, I need them to be able to build the shoe using their skills and the tools at hand by themselves within a few days.’

INFORMATION

on-running.com

Italian Mario Moretti Polegato’s plantar epiphany happened in cowboy country, USA in the late 1980s. The son of Veneto wine dynasty, young Polegato was in Reno, Nevada promoting the family’s famous Villa Sandi prosecco… and he was baking hot. ‘The heat started to affect me immediately, especially my feet,’ he recalls. ‘So I took out my Victorinox swiss army knife and made holes in my tennis shoes for ventilation. I felt instant relief.’ A small scar on the 66 year old’s hand marks the moment where the knife slipped during the on-the-hoof procedure.

Returning to Italy and now on a podiatric, air-conditioning mission Polegato went on the hunt for perforated footwear… but could find nothing. So he invented his own; a revolutionary membrane-based construction composed of a microporous material that absorbs sweat in the form of water vapour before expelling it through the perforated sole. ‘I discovered there was a membrane in existence that was made up of millions of micropores whose diameter is greater than that of a molecule of steam but smaller than a molecule of water. The membrane enables sweat to escape without letting water in.’

Polegato attached membrane to perforated sole. An effective, working prototype was made and (crucially) patents immediately established in 100 countries. He took his new invention to the world’s major sports shoes manufacturers. They all turned him down.

‘My story is a bit like Steve Jobs’, the Geox CEO says. ‘I had invented a technology that improved the experience of wearing a rubber soled shoe but people thought I was crazy, they said. You are trying to sell me shoes with holes in them!’ Astonished that no-one believed in his maverick, game changing technology in 1995 Polegato decided to start his own business – just five people making children’s shoes. Almost 25 years later, the Geox Respira brand – men’s, women’s and children’s footwear (breathable rubber and leather soles), clothing and accessories – is 30,000 employees strong and has around 1,300 stores all over the world. And the likes of Nike and Adidas still haven’t cracked Polegato’s secret formula.

The restless, billionaire founder who drives a Tesla and designs his own distinctive spectacles, likes to call Geox ‘a technology company with applied fashion.’ Geox is not a trend-driven, or athletic-inspired brand, he insists, but it was responsible for inventing the now massive lifestyle sneaker apparel category, the applied fashionability of its lines contributed by the savvy appointment of, firstly, chief marketing officer Andrea Tremolada, formerly of Roberto Cavalli and Salvatore Ferragamo and then women’s footwear designer Ernesto Esposito.

An Italian cobbling legend of international repute (Andy Warhol painted his portrait more than once) Esposito has been designing shoes for the likes of Sergio Rossi, Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Sonia Rykiel, Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Bruno Magli since the 1970s. Esposito joined Geox to rev up its now extensive women’s lines, adding aeriated lines of Ballerinas and sandals with extra va-va-voom, his hiring rubber-stamping Polegato’s desire to make his company a more design-focused endeavour.

Wallpaper* is with Polegato discussing women’s shoes, breathable membranes, the company’s recent acquisition of the Diadora brand and smartphone-programmed LED-illuminated soles (a new innovation for the Geox kids’ line) in the pit lane of a FIA Formula E race in Paris. Cars pass by the street circuit’s straights in a thrilling, blurry disconcert of clatter and whistle, big batteries humming with energy, carbon brake shoes glowing – two of them bearing the Geox logo.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, California – AKA the largest single Prius-driving, metropolitan EV (electric vehicle) market in the world – the Geox Dragon team’s drivers wear racing shoes made bespoke by Geox’s lab and fireproof suits that employ cutting-edge Geox apparel technology to enable improved cooling and breathing. Brand and race series are a good fit because, explains Polegato, ‘the Formula E schedule takes in places like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Morocco – hot places where keeping cool is essential. The drivers often have a body temperature problem.’ When the races are done, the kit goes back to the Geox lab for examination and improvement, the drivers effectively serving as test pilots for the new product. A new line of Geox sneakers, the Aerantis D is a replica of the custom sneaker created for the Geox Dragon racing team.

The Paris race begins in sunshine and ends in a fierce rain storm. Cars spill off the corners and chicanes all over the track but the Geox Dragon team cars keep their cool – rubber maintaining a firm grip on wet tarmac, monochrome livery looking stylish. Geox’s technology and applied fashion in fast-forward motion.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Geox website

Few designers have been as bonded to a specific colour as Christian Louboutin. His soaring stilettos are distinguished by their vivid red undersides, a feature created in 1993 using an assistant’s nail polish and ubiquitous ever since. As his empire grew, so the same shade of red (a precise Pantone) made its way on to men’s shoes, baby shoes, fragrance packaging and, naturally, became a nail polish. A quarter of a century on, Louboutin’s claim to the colour has even been affirmed by the EU’s highest court, which ruled that the brand had exclusive rights to using it on the sole of any shoe, regardless of shape. Not surprisingly, the footwear maven’s favourite dish, salmorejo, takes on a similar hue. He calls this chilled concoction of tomatoes and bread ‘the image of sunrise; of hot and long days’.

Ingredients
200g baguette, torn into chunks
12 tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 red peppers, deseeded and finely chopped
20ml sherry vinegar
160ml extra virgin olive oil
jamon serrano and hard-boiled eggs, to serve

Recipe
Place the baguette chunks in a bowl and cover with boiling water and clingfilm. In a different bowl, do the same with the tomatoes, garlic and peppers. Leave both bowls to stand for an hour.

After an hour, squeeze out the bread and pour away the soaking liquid. Drain the tomato mixture, reserving some of the soaking water. In a blender, whizz together the bread, tomato mixture, vinegar and olive oil until super smooth. Add a little of the reserved soaking water if necessary.

Season with salt and serve with a drizzle of olive oil, some diced jamon serrano and and crumbled hard-boiled eggs.

As originally featured in the September 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*234)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Christian Louboutin website

Although eco-conscious clothing has become more visible – and an ethical focus for bigger brands almost expected – in recent years, sustainably geared footwear is still on the ascent. Three boutique labels with widely differing aesthetics – Good Guys, Veja and Feit – are the latest to lead the charge. From fairtrade sourcing to getting creative with new materials and producing in small, controlled quantities, the carefully considered practices wielded by this trio will inspire others to take up the cause.

Good Guys
In 2010, designer Marion Hanania created Good Guys, a vegan shoe label that manufactures its wares out of canvas, natural rubber and microfibres that mimics leather and suede. Hanania, who was then working with other French brands as a freelance designer, travelled frequently to China and witnessed the impact that animal husbandry, overproduction and overconsumption in the footwear industry had on the environment first hand. ‘I couldn’t stand the way the shoe industry was going,’ she says. ‘I decided that I could create a company that will match my ethics and taste, and that will only produce shoes that you really need without following the insane pace of the fashion seasons.’

Now designed in Los Angeles and made in Portugal, Good Guys’ collections are filled with versatile, understated styles that blend in with modern, everyday life. From high top sneakers to western-style boots and androgynous sandals, the shoes are made in factories focused on impacting the environment as little as possible. ‘My shoes aren’t made of plastic. Vegan does not mean cheap or ugly. We are more eco-friendly by nature as we don’t use animal products and so we are drastically reducing our water consumption, just as being vegetarian or vegan does.'

Veja
With its pared back yet retro appeal, Veja’s all-rounded sneakers are a fixture among style mavens and minimalists alike. The brand’s sustainable message makes this all the better. Whether it’s sourcing fairtrade, organic cotton for plimsolls or using low-impact materials like silk, or innovative fabrics such as B-mesh (made from recycled plastic bottles), Veja’s commitment to the environment is unwavering, 13 years in.

‘The beginning of Veja was to change every step of the production chain, from the raw materials to the stores,’ recall founders Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion. ‘For example, we started work in 2005 with a social rehabilitation NGO to take care of all the logistics for Veja. [It first occupied] a small mezzanine and now this NGO is our warehouse and ships Veja sneakers all over the world. Eighty people are working there.’

The French label’s latest release is a collaborative collection with the revered taxidermy institution Deyrolle. Prompted by a remark from Deyrolle’s CEO, Prince Louis Albert de Broglie – a fan of the brand – the joint effort brings together classic French aesthetics with an exciting, ecological future. Today, Veja also announced the launch of a new website, which two years in the making, shows the contracts of its organic cotton and amazonian rubber producers, and the transparency of its supply chain, with details including the wages of its factory workers, social audits and the chemical tests which the trainers undergo.

Feit for BDDW
Easily recognised by their uncompromising and beautifully raw construction, Feit shoes exhibit the kind of luxurious, well-made austerity that has product design fans yearning for more. Designed in New York by Tull Price, a footwear industry veteran, the label consciously eschews excess consumerism, production and volume, and prides itself on its quality, sustainability and integrity.

Price says, ‘What I believe after 20 years in this industry is products made by hand with high quality, natural materials in small numbers, that age and can be repaired is the most sustainable, low-impact method of production. This surpasses mass production with synthetics, which leads to landfill.’

In an especially enlightened meeting of minds, Feit has teamed up with the furniture maker BDDW on a limited-edition collection of hand-painted designs. Highly crafted using fine illustration, hand dyed and hand sewn techniques, the 40 one-of-a-kind lined and unlined hiking boots are at the pinnacle of both brand’s design practices and make the perfect women’s winter boots. 

Tull explains: ‘Both BDDW and Feit have a very high degree of craft, using handmade techniques within our processes. [We both] use handmade with an elevated, refined design sense, quality in rich, natural materials and the function in design is a focus for both. Additionally, [we both] share a design sensibility to create single objects, i.e. nothing in large volumes or with a lot of repetition. Each product is unique.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Feit website, the Good Guys website, the Veja website

‘The smallest things are always the most precious,’ says Marco Zanini. He is used to thinking big, engineering a string of successful brand relaunches, but in late 2016, Zanini downsized to design for artisanal shoemaker Santoni.

On a sunless winter day, he arrives at Milan’s Casa degli Atellani – a Renaissance-era city landmark where Leonardo lived while painting The Last Supper – and opens the door to the whimsically deco apartment of the late architect Piero Portaluppi, which served as the inspiration for Zanini’s newest collection. Portaluppi was a key figure of early 20th-century Milan, and his style became part of the city’s fabric in buildings such as Palazzo Crespi, Villa Necchi and the Liberty-influenced renovation of Casa degli Atellani.

Zanini, a remarkably tall man, passes through Portaluppi’s foyer, a room frescoed like an arboretum with fan palms, laurel, ivy and cactus, and takes a seat in the living room. ‘Small means precise. Small means agile,’ he continues, bending his knees sharply to perch on a petite ivory couch. ‘Small was the very idea that gave birth to this project.’

The Milan-born designer, formerly creative director of Halston, Rochas and Schiaparelli, and an alumnus of Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, turned his back on Paris and New York for a home-town brand.

At Santoni, Zanini’s purview has been the introduction of a carefully considered handful of designs – the top tier of the company’s footwear offerings, but also its first lines of men’s and women’s apparel, a pared-down capsule collection of timeless wardrobe essentials he calls Edited.

‘The beauty of this project is its reduced dimensions. Being limited in scale makes the work more dynamic and autonomous than at giant corporations,’ he says, rolling his eyes skyward at the thought of past frustrations. ‘Now I’m free of certain deadlines. And I’m not contending with 500 cooks in the kitchen.’

‘Less is better,’ agrees Angelo Flaccavento, fashion journalist and Zanini’s collaborator on the Edited project. ‘This project is different,’ he says. At a time when designers complain of the fashion industry’s cyclical strictures and a ceaseless pressure to produce, the limited scale of the Edited collection allows the pair time to contemplate and experiment.

At Santoni, Zanini kicks off each collection not with sketches but with a visual and verbal concept, that becomes a book when the clothing collection is complete. ‘Recounting a collection this way reveals Marco’s ideas in designing it, with his universe of references condensed into a jacket or a dress,’ says Flaccavento. ‘I could never design clothes,’ he continues, ‘but it’s important to have not just a visual person but a verbal person. And to be a curator, or to be a journalist, is the same mindset because the starting point is analysis.’ For Edited Trip, the duo also collaborated wth Marco Cendron, creative director and founder of the Milan-based studio Pomo, who art directed the publication. ‘Today we’re drowning in products that are mostly pointless,’ Flaccavento adds. ‘This project is different.’

The latest outing of Edited has drawn on Portaluppi’s home, and the book features images of his kaleidoscopic marble collection that still lines wood shelves in the living room (the 1,500 little marble slabs, all cut to the same size, were assembled by a young geologist in Rome in the mid-19th century, who trawled the city’s archaeological sites). Architecture lasts. Marble lasts. To relay the story of the clothes with these images is a rejection of today’s over-evanescent fashion world, Zanini argues. The hardbound volume is filled with quasi-psychedelic close-ups of stones: the blood-red veins of a rosy marble and the painterly amber rings of a fossilised wood, interspersed with very occasional coolly moody images of the collection.

It’s understatement as a communication tool, but then Zanini is motivated by rejection as much as creation, having traded glitzier opportunities for the chance to create exactly what he wants: ‘an edit of things that don’t change every six months, designed to accompany the wearer in the long term’, as he explains. There are no extraneous details, no wild cards in this soft-spoken, cerebral collection; only finely wrought basics rendered in his signature subdued palette. In an industry shackled by fast-paced production and almost instant irrelevance, it’s the brave designer who abandons the limelight to create what can endure.

As originally featured in the March 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*228)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Santoni website and the Pomo website

Andreas Murkudis opened his first shop in Berlin after 15 years as director of the city’s Museum der Dinge (Museum of Design). It was 2003 and the dawn of the ‘concept store’ – a haloed interior that took the austere minimalism of the nineties and warmed it up with a dash of millennial optimism. And, for some, that confidence paid off. He has since opened another five stores across Germany, each reflective of his rigorous taste. ‘I’m a bad sales person, so I thought I needed to sell things I loved. It has always been a mix of things that interested me and this is still true today,’ Murkudis says.

In 2011, his main store moved from Mitte into the former Tagesspiegel newspaper building on Potsdamer Straße – a vast space that feels both bare yet lavish. ‘My idea is always to have a strong selection and each thing needs its own space to breathe. You know, I don’t like this internet thing. We do it a little bit, but at the end of the day we have more than 8,000 different items and we spend so much time changing the space, that people prefer to come and see it for themselves.’

Right now, the shop is playing host to the first ever Birkenstock Box – a mobile retail concept initiated by the venerated shoe-brand favoured by hippies and hipsters the world over. The site-specific, multi-brand space was designed in collaboration with Gonzalez Haase AAS, who worked with Murkudis on the interior of his store. Over the coming months, it will travel to international destinations such as Kirna Zabête in the Hamptons and Barneys New York.

The Box provides a neutral, balanced and blessedly quiet showcase for merchandise. At Murkudis, the spotlight is on the handmade. The interior is even made up of layers of the Birkenstock’s iconic cork material. At the centre is a modernist structure that mirrors an island draped in leather accessories and fine glassware in the main store. Here the edit focuses on the natural with hand-poured candles by CristaSeya, liquor by Stählemühle and artisanal chic cotton clothes by Roberta Furlanetto and Aspesi. On sale too are limited edition sandals designed by Murkudis’ brother, the fashion designer Kostas Murkudis. The cork sole of the classic Arizona style is moulded in leather, available in forest green or deep navy.

‘I don’t normally like these pop up stores because…I have a store,’ Murkudis smiles, ‘but I had known the team for some time and it sounded like we could do something really special. Birkenstock was really generous throughout.’ Shipping containers are arranged at double height at the front of the store. Connected by an internal staircase and offset, they create a terrace where the upper level retracts, offering a seamless line into the opposite building – a haven of beautiful things. ‘I like how it extends and connects to each other,’ he says. It’s a corker.

INFORMATION

The Box is open at Andreas Murkudis, Berlin until 22 July. For more information, visit the Birkenstock website

ADDRESS

Potsdamer Straße 81e
10785 Berlin
Germany

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The light bulb went on for Giuseppe Santoni while on a mission to decorate his mountain house in St Moritz. ‘I was choosing furniture fabrics together with my wife,’ the CEO of Santoni shoes recalls. ‘We liked Rubelli a lot. Then I started looking closer at the colour charts. And I simply saw huge potential.’

Not only did the footwear entrepreneur end up drenching his home in Rubelli fabrics, but he also introduced the distinctive upholsteries to his niche footwear brand. His team began modestly, adding Rubelli’s lush textiles to a few designs, including a snappy polka-dot silk velvet that Gio Ponti created for Rubelli in 1934.

‘We just started by playing,’ Santoni recalls. ‘It was a game.’ But now, four years later, the partnership has produced a serious, full-scale collection, with over 48 models for both men and women.

The marriage fuses Italian born-and-bred talents. Santoni, founded in 1975, treats its rigorously handmade, perfectly formed and expertly polished shoes like objects to keep on a shelf. Rubelli, founded in 1858, makes upholstery fabrics and textiles beautiful enough to frame and hang on a wall. Each knows its business inside and out, and plans to stay in its respective corner. 

‘We’ve dressed homes, sometimes bodies, but never shoes until Giuseppe came along,’ says Nicolò Rubelli, great-great-grandson of the company’s founder Lorenzo Rubelli. ‘Today, people want specialised products. No one would buy a Rubelli car. I’m still confused why fashion brands make watches. I don’t order meat in a fish restaurant.’

Still, both brands have recognised the importance of diversifying their businesses. But they do it with carefully thought-out collaborations that bring in the talents of other high-end producers or rising names. Santoni, for example, has made a splash in recent years in Milan with its beautifully curated, salon-like presentations during Fashion Week. Five years ago, the company turned to Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci from Dimore Studio to design installations in its via Montenapoleone showroom, long before the studio became a darling of the design press. It has enlisted the artist Antonio Pippolini and writer Angelo Flaccavento to create entertaining peep-show installations in a gilded Milanese palazzo. Most recently, Santoni has tapped Marco Zanini, former designer for Rochas and Schiaparelli, to create Santoni’s first-ever capsule collection of clothing.

Rubelli is no less prolific. The company’s core business is textiles and wall hangings, but it recently launched a series of less formal fabrics called Dominique Kieffer, designed by Paola Navone, as well as a partnership to provide fabrics for Armani Casa. It has also begun to produce lighting and furniture under a new Rubelli Casa label, which will have an official, splashy launch during this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan. All the same, pairing furniture upholstery and footwear is an unusual adventure. And technically, it is something of a trick.

‘Working with upholstery fabric is a great deal more complicated than leather, as it is neither flexible nor resistant,’ Santoni reports. ‘But I’ve adapted my shoe technology and know-how to support these fabrics, and we use different sewing needles.’

The shoes made with Rubelli fabrics are all produced in a special division of Santoni that is dedicated to exotic skins, fur and special leathers that are painted or unusually treated. ‘It’s like Mercedes-Benz,’ says Santoni of his 60-person special unit, situated within the company’s headquarters in Le Marche, in central Italy. ‘They have the normal factory where they make regular cars. And then they have the special division where they make Formula One cars.’

The Rubelli fabrics add a touch of opulence to Santoni’s otherwise rigorous, sober silhouettes. ‘Our style is very Venetian. It’s an illness, being us!’ laughs Rubelli. ‘We hope it’s contagious! We’re not able to detach from it: the reflection of the light, the colours, the gold, the patina, the salt, the time – there’s nothing hard about it. The French reproduce the 18th century in a faithful way, using the exact same colours. This is too harsh for us. Our Italian fabrics are absolutely lived in.’

Santoni’s silhouettes – with their distinctive attenuations, unusual volumes and highly crafted details – are just as eye-catching. ‘We want to make a product and object of desire. When you see it, you say, “Wow, I love it, I want it!”’ says Santoni, who transformed the 40-year-old company founded by his father from a manufacturer into a brand in the late 1990s. ‘Today, people are only buying truly special products. We don’t do commercial products. We don’t do shoes to walk in. What we do are objects of desire. Of course, we have day things, but they have beautiful proportions, forms and an aspect that is different than others. We need to distinguish ourselves, making our product special, unique, diverse.’

Up until now, Santoni’s shoe shapes and high-quality craft were its main points of differentiation. But now the addition of Rubelli’s ornate fabrics on the brand’s ladylike pumps, delicate sandals, tassled loafers, low-cut monk-strap shoes, brogues and lace-up shoes for both men and women create an entirely new level of intrigue.

‘This gives us the opportunity to use fabrics that are very, very particular,’ says Santoni. ‘We’re able do things that are feminine, special and very beautiful. We give women the most particular items,’ he adds. ‘But men like the richness too!’

The collaboration has provided growth and exposure for both brands. Although both bosses covet steady growth, they also recognise the importance of staying niche.

‘I don’t want to grow too much,’ says Santoni, who already manages 600 employees. ‘I just want to stay exclusive, establish the brand, make it more, well, cool, even though I don’t want to use that word. We just need to let people know about us and understand our special way of thinking.’

For Rubelli, the collaboration opens novel levels of demand. ‘You may change your shoes every day,’ he says. ‘But your couch... Never!’

As originally featured in the March 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*216)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Santoni website and the Rubelli website

Earlier this week, womenswear designer Roksanda and luxurious footwear label Malone Souliers paired up for a second season, collaborating on the shoe designs for Roksanda’s Rothko-hued A/W 2017 show.
 
Since the launch of Malone Souliers seven seasons ago, the London-based shoe brand has become synonymous with intelligent design, crafting pieces using precise lines and beautiful colour-blocked details. Is it no surprise, then, that the architect-trained, Serbian-born Roksanda, who is renowned for her own use of colour and geometry (inspired by artists such as William Eggleston, Julia Dault and Hélio Oiticica), first tapped the duo in S/S 2017 for a footwear collaboration.

‘There is now a real sense of creative intimacy and communication,’ explains Roy Luwolt, founder and managing director of Malone Souliers, of the second runway collection. ‘We’ve both become really invested in the raw design process of the project.’
 
For A/W 2017, this process culminated in slouchy thigh-high and ankle length boots, and delicate slip-on mules in rich claret, chestnut and bright red nappa leather. ‘The styles evolved around finding something that would give the collection a supple and slouchy look without being too heavy,’ explains Malone Souliers founder and creative director Mary Alice Malone. ‘We wanted to reflect Roksanda’s flowing silhouettes.’ This looser shape was also echoed in Roksanda’s interest in nomadic uniforms, with boots resembling luxurious versions of expedition-ready footwear, featuring drawstrings in heavy leather, threaded through colourful enamel eyelets.

‘We wanted the shoes to mimic the contrasting ideologies of traditionalism and modernism in the collection; focusing on texture, contour and colour, curved heels and rubberised and lacquered colour blocking,’ explains Roksanda of the designs, that reflect both of the labels’ interests in fabrications. Roksanda’s own pieces have featured embellishments using plastics and tiny spheres blown up with air, while Malone Souliers own A/W 2017 collection featured silk landscape prints, inspired by early Chinese paintings. ‘The pieces that we have made are undeniably relevant to both brands,’ Luwolt adds, emphasising that, in terms of collaboration, the shoe really does fit.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Roksanda website, and the Malone Souliers website

Christian Louboutin, the genius behind the red-soled staple of shoe-loving fashionistas, is a pioneer of creative collaborations. Earlier this year he turned to Thomas Heatherwick to design the twisted bottles of his new fragrance range, and he enjoys an ongoing meeting of minds with David Lynch, with whom he created a range of fetishistic shoes. Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks served as the inspiration behind Shoe Peaks, his latest bag design. Made from the last of So Kate, Louboutin’s stilettoes that launched a thousand copies, the sculptural clutch is a surreal nod to its design derivation. Created with impeccable attention to detail, the aluminium bag comes in either a high gloss black lacquer or gold metallic finish.

As originally featured in the December 2016 issue of Wallpaper* ( W*213) 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Christian Louboutin website

A career that begins without a formal education, veers into streetwear and curves towards handcrafted leather footwear may seem an unlikely one, but for Tull Price it was a natural arc. ‘There’s an emphasis on trying to create fresh, interesting, and unique product’, he explains. ‘Early in my career, this was done mainly via innovative styling and design; more recently my focus has been on refinement, materials, and construction.’

Price’s shoes and accessories brand FEIT – co-founded in 2005 with his brother Josh – reflects that evolution towards what he calls ‘neoluxury’. His initial fascination for globalisation left him feeling disenfranchised after selling his first label; now, Price is ‘moving away from volume and excess and towards quality, sustainability, and the pursuit of product integrity.’

The label uses vegetable tanned leathers and cork

Price pushed forward with his conscientious idea after learning through practice and under the guidance of mentors. He has spent the last ten years in Europe, learning about traditional shoemaking and tanning – not an uncomplicated path, hence the label’s name. ‘FEIT is a homonym for fight,’ the entrepreneur explains. ‘The name was created to describe an individual’s fight for growth, evolution, and success; whatever that means to them within their life.'

FEIT elevates the 'Made in China' concept by employing highly skilled people in the region. ‘To have something done completely by hand in this day and age is very rare,’ says Price. ‘We have been able to assemble and train possibly the largest group of hand sewers capable of creating shoes in this manner; we now have approximately 100 people based in a small town in southern China.’

Highly skilled sewers in southern China craft FEIT's footwear by hand

And there’s no cutting corners either: the artisans work with natural materials only. Vegetable tanned cowhides – a by-product of the meat industry – are incorporated from the outsoles to the laces. Natural cork is used for a layer of the sole, as is bamboo shank stabiliser. The outsoles are buffalo leather, the thread is rubber and a vegetable tanned leather strip envelops the sole.

FEIT’s trademark seamless one-piece upper, hand-stitched at the heel, is based on a set of lasts built in 2005 with Tuscan master last-maker, the 96-year-old Verdichio Padrone. As a result of this construction, they take on the shape of the wearer, making both the classic and athletic versions of FEIT footwear equally comfortable.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit FEIT’s website

Famed for its hardworking Chelsea boots and other finely crafted leather goods, the iconic company RM Williams has been a bastion of Australian heritage and identity since its founding in 1932. Renowned for producing durable footwear made from single pieces of leather, a concept that was developed by it eponymous founder to suit the lifestyles of pioneers dwelling in the Aussie outback, the brand has now upped sticks and opened its first boutique in New York City.

Located in Soho, the airy boutique has been conceived by the retail design agency e2 and Mika Utzon Popov, a sculptor/draftsman/printmaker and grandson of Jorn Utzon, the architect behind the Sydney Opera House. Inspired by the natural light in the outback, Popov has created a site-specific sculpture that evokes an aerial view of the country’s indigenous landscape. Using hand tools similar to those traditionally used to create the brand’s wares, the sculptural wall feature serves as a dramatic focal point in the space.

Overall, the boutique has been designed to resemble the heritage wool sheds more commonly found in the Aussie countryside. A timber storefront and long, copper-plated display tables bring a rustic feel to the interior, which is enhanced even more by a steel framework for hanging and showcasing products, much like traditional stockyard fencing. Leather wall panels and a special flooring treatment that emulates the outback’s red earth complete the evocative picture.

The store will not only be home to R.M. Williams’ signature pieces such as boots, including men’s and women’s winter boots, belts and accessories, but it will also offer the label’s new bespoke service, which allows customers to create their own unique boots.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the RM Williams website

ADDRESS

152 Spring Street, New York

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John Lobb was a determined fellow. As indomitable as the nature he admired when, aged 21, he travelled from his native Cornwall in south-west England to London – on foot – with aspirations of becoming a master bootmaker. A century and a half on, Paula Gerbase, artistic director of the shoe brand he founded, is using the Dartmoor landscape that Lobb passed through to inform her work.

‘When I started my role [in 2014] it felt important that I educate myself as to where he came from and literally put myself in his shoes and make the journey he took,’ she says. Dartmoor’s open moorland and dramatic rocky tors made an impression on Gerbase, who was born in Brazil and lived in the United States and Switzerland before settling in London 14 years ago. ‘I found the primitive landscape very moving,’ she says.

She had been exploring the company archive and working on an identity rebrand when she came across an old russet-coloured shoebox that she liked. ‘That was in early autumn [2014]. When I visited Dartmoor later, all the ferns had gone red. I had found that old Lobb shoebox and then I found the same colour in nature. It was an obvious sign that I had to use it again,’ she says. The new identity – with russet shoeboxes – was rolled out at the beginning of this year.

Gerbase has been back to Dartmoor many times to document the changing seasons, and has a particular interest in its native grasses and mosses, some of which she is experimenting with growing at home, alongside her existing plant collection. ‘We’ll see how much luck I’ll have with that in central London,’ she says.

The designer created artificial Dartmoor tors in a London showroom to present her A/W 2016 John Lobb collection, for which she reintroduced a walking boot from the archive and developed a new way of crafting welted shoes – a construction she calls ‘tensile’.

But to present the S/S 2017 offering, she took fashion editors to Dartmoor. ‘I wanted to immerse people in what Lobb would have seen when he journeyed to London,’ she says. ‘And I wanted to explain where I was coming from with my direction for the brand. 
It seemed relevant to get people to put one foot in front of the other, connect with the earth and interact with each other in nature, rather than in a showroom in a city.’

Six plinths displaying the S/S 2017 collection were placed along a route that started at Two Bridges, in the heart of Dartmoor, and meandered eight miles north. Gerbase introduced further examples of her tensile construction. ‘What I’ve achieved with this advanced way of making welted shoes is a lighter and more flexible shoe,’ she explains. ‘We travel a lot, men travel a lot.’ (She won’t comment on whether there are plans at John Lobb to introduce a women’s collection – she wears men’s.) ‘I have created something that provides comfort from the first wear, but you can replace the sole and your shoes will last a lifetime if you care for them properly.’

Gerbase has used the expertise of artisans working at the John Lobb factory in Northampton – some of whom are the third generation in their family to work there – to develop the technique. ‘It is amazing to have that level of knowledge informing both our ready-to-wear and bespoke products,’ she says.

A self-confessed control freak, Gerbase finds being in an untameable environment frees her mind to be at its most creative. Since 2010, she has had her own clothing label – 1205 – which presents both men’s and women’s collections. She visited the Atlas Mountains and travelled with a Berber tribe to explore her inspiration for the latest collection. ‘I was thinking about intense heat and the need for clothing that is light but will still protect you from the sun. I think you have to feel those conditions to explore your thinking.’

For pleasure, recently, she went on a road trip from Marfa, Texas, across New Mexico to experience Donald Judd’s concrete boxes and Walter De Maria’s steel rods. ‘I returned with the view that in my lifetime I need to visit every piece of great land art in the world,’ she says.

Gerbase is someone who will drag you to a remote location and wake you up at 4am to experience the dawn in a particular place. It is when immersed in such an experience that she finds inspiration. ‘You can spend all day looking at colour charts and pictures on the internet, which are valid methods of designing and I do that too, but I am looking for something else to take over. That is what inspires what I put out with both John Lobb and my own label,’ she says.

‘I realise, as designers, we sometimes forget that what we do is not art. It is applied art, and design is so much about fulfilling needs,’ she continues. ‘But we constantly need to evolve and observing what you can’t control helps me immensely.’

As originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the John Lobb website

Photography: Ben Benoliel

‘Love does strange things to people,’ says Aurora James, the Toronto-native, New York-based founder of Brother Vellies, the footwear and accessory brand winning a loyal following for its sometimes-fluffy, always on-point, sustainably crafted creations. It was love for humanity and the planet that drove her to set up the line, which is now a regular sell out at MatchesFashion.com and Opening Ceremony, and love that inspires her on a daily basis.

This is a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve so that others can wear the benefits on their feet. She describes herself as ‘an excavator of my own heart on a fairly regular basis’ and it's important to her to create a ‘world where people can afford to take care of themselves and their family.’

James launched Brother Vellies in 2013 with a collection for S/S 2014 after being inspired by her travels in Africa, particularly Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco. Since then the label has become a buzz brand: last year it was one of the CFDA Fashion Fund winners.

The name of the brand comes from the colloquial name for 'Veldskoen', a traditional desert boot favoured by outdoorsy African types. ‘I brought in the word "Brother" because I felt like there was a connection between certain groups, religions and tribes there that could be understood and appreciated through different cultural apparel,’ she explains. ‘They wear Babouche, for example, in many parts of Africa. In South Africa, when they would see the Babouche, they'd say, “those are from our brothers in the north”.’

Her own ‘love affair’ with shoes began in her mother's closet. ‘She had a great collection of Inuit mukluks, and a lot of other traditional apparel - vintage kimonos, indigo pieces from Africa. I would daydream about the women who wore these things a million miles away from Canada, where I lived. I got lost in this world of fashion and culture.’

But James' route to designer was not a linear path. In 1999, at 15, she started an internship at Next Models in Toronto then, in 2006, studied fashion and journalism in an ill-fated university career. ‘I got kicked out of the Ryerson University journalism programme in either second or third year. I actually don't remember,’ she recalls. Simultaneously, she took a job with Jeanne Beker at Fashion Television, which was a strong influence on her imagination. Later, she washed up in LA working as a creative consultant for brands including Elite and Thomas Wylde.

Her first trip to Africa was in 2011, to Morocco, and it created in her a desire to develop and sustain jobs on the continent. ‘We don't need any more fashion in the world, unless that fashion can be used as a vehicle to crest positive change on this planet. I liked the idea of empowering communities through my favourite form of art,’ she says. ‘The continent of Africa is perhaps in the direst need of opportunity right now. I want to give opportunity to people who feel the world has forgotten them.’

At her A/W 2016 presentation in New York earlier this year, Lenny Kravitz's It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over played over a scene set to resemble a nature sanctuary (complete with live butterflies) inspired by a recent trip to the Omo Valley in Ethiopia. Standout styles included a new line of handbags trimmed with tufts of animal hair and an incredible yeti-like pair of tall boots covered in shaggy goat hair.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Brother Vellies website

Footwear fashions ebb and flow, but espadrilles are an enduring style staple, with everyone from Valentino to Saint Laurent doing their own beach versions of the Catalan classic. But with designer variations retailing into the hundreds of pounds, there's room for more affordable everyday versions too – which is where our favourite Brazilian beach brand comes in. Havaianas’ S/S16 espadrille collection comes in a rainbow of colours, but also in two completely new styles: the striped Origine Navy and the palm-printed Folhagem. Though they retain the look of classic espadrilles, Havaianas have replaced the traditional esparto soles with the same trademark rubber that defines their legendary flip-flops, handy for those Brazilian downpours when rope soles would normally dissolve.

As originally featured in the July issue of Wallpaper* (W*208)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Havaianas’ website

Photography: Ania Wawrzkowicz

There is no shortage of heritage shoe brands that rest on of their hand made, artisanal laurels. But very few are still family-owned, run and producing shoes in their native city, just as their great grandfather did some 131 years prior.

Austrian Till Reiter, great grandson of cobbler Ludwig Reiter is doing just that within a converted 16th century manor, just 20 minutes from Vienna. What was once an aristocratic country residence, later had a turn as a working farm and then most recently a school, before the Reiter’s came across it in a dilapidated state after having outgrown their own Vienna industrial estate.

Purchased in 2008, the Renaissance manor is a national heritage site, spread across 30,000 square metres of farmland, with 5,000 of factory space. Here, under the plastered arches and cast iron pillars of the Süßenbrunn estate’s former stables, 70 employees produce around 30,000 pairs of shoes annually, averaging out at 100 a day.

The property’s former coach house now multitasks as the luxury brand’s showroom, design offices and shipping department, while the main house is currently undergoing refurbishment, destined to regain its former glory as an experiential shop. ‘It’s a space for the King, and the King is the customer,’ says Reiter, leading the estate tour with daughter Magdalena in tow. ‘So we are the managers in here,’ he says motioning towards the charmingly restored, albeit pared-back coach house.

It’s an approach to business that has seen Reiter weather Europe’s longstanding economic pressures to move production offshore, with Ludwig Reiter now standing solo as the lone producer of welted shoes in Austria. ‘I could not imagine sitting in an airport to go to Hong Kong every week,’ he smiles, adding, ‘My belief was that sooner than later they would all came back,’ he says referring to the luxury good industry’s recent ‘Made in Italy’ campaign.

In 2000 the shoe brand also acquired the renowned leather goods business of Franz Schulz (who has outfitted each Austrian president upon taking office), along with his flagship store on Vienna’s Führichgasse, also integrating his hand sewn cases and bags into the Reiter repertoire.

The Süßenbrunn workshop itself still utilises the Goodyear method, first embraced by Reiter’s grandfather when he spent time working in American at the turn of the 20th century. There Ludwig Reiter II witnessed the Goodyear technique for welted shoes and brought the time saving machines back to Europe.

A Goodyear machine dating back to 1910 is still in good enough nick to get pulled back into service if need be, Reiter explains proudly. Today an artisan demonstrates the same welting process, which has not changed in a century: a strip of leather (the welt) is sewn around the bottom of the upper and insole, and that same welt is then sewn onto the sole. ‘With leather you only have one try,’ he says as another rather antique machine’s needle attaches the welt. Each pair of shoes goes through 200 - 300 individual production steps, including the final outsole shaping, which is still finished by hand.

We walk past a bespoke order of eight pairs of maroon brogues, the uppers awaiting an introduction to their sole mates. Ludwig Reiter is one of very few companies who can create a shoe to your specifications, with your choice of last for a price increase of a mere 10-15%, within a turnaround of a couple of weeks. This is the prestige of having their own factories and dedicated workforce.

Within its retail network of 20 stores around the globe, Ludwig Reiter’s best seller may still be a classic black Derby, but their lambskin snow boots are finding favour with the après alpine set, while you would be hard pressed to find a finer, more elegant or comfortable Chelsea boot – the whole point of this sole is that it perfectly moulds to the incline of your foot for an optimal fit. Brad Pitt was such a fan of his Husaren boots that they became an integral part of his Lt. Aldo Raine character in Inglourious Basterds.

‘The future of tradition’ is this brand’s vision statement and it perfectly sums up its authenticity; catering to those seeking shoes that have been expertly guided by the hands of history.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Ludwig Reiter website

ADDRESS

6 Brook Street
W1S 1BB London

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In the small town of Montegranaro in Italy’s Marche region, a tiny, family-run atelier has been honing its craft for the last 69 years. The craft in question? Artisanal leather shoes. And the brand, Alberto Guardiani, has become synonymous with its refined craftsmanship and innovation ever since it began in 1947. In fact, it’s thanks to these values that the brand enjoys a long-standing Handmade collaboration with Wallpaper* – the last of which resulted in a Robert Storey-designed window display in its Milan flagship.

This year, however, marks a significant turning point in the history of the shoemaker: Serena Guardiani – daughter of Alberto and granddaughter of founder Dino – is stepping into the role of creative director, of the brand's women's collections. The 26-year-old graduate of Milan’s Istituto Marangoni joins her elder sisters Rubina and Guya within the company, making the transition to the third Guardiani generation complete. ‘I’m excited to bring a woman’s point of view and a touch of femininity to the functionality we’re known for,’ Serena says of the direction she intends to steer the brand in.

Her father will continue to oversee the men’s side of the business, and will remain her visual sparring partner. ‘My father is definitely “King of the style office”,’ Serena laughs, before adding: ‘He is the kind of man who very much believes you have to earn your space before you can take it. Because of this, I spent a long time developing my experience outside of the business.’

This experience has culminated in the brand’s second collection under Serena’s creative guidance, something that’s both a throwback to the glamour of the 1970s and 1980s, and a nod to the future. For A/W 2016, dainty brogues grounded with tough tread and a pair of snakeskin-embossed gold leather booties are standouts. The meeting of glossy leather and chunky lug soles is the kind of classic-versus-modern contradiction that embodies Guardiani to a T. ‘I have a big respect for our history and brand DNA,’ says Serena. ‘From a design perspective, this will always be my starting point.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Alberto Guardiani website

Photography courtesy Guardiani

In Antwerp, where better than a disused diamond cutting factory to set up a company with like-minded friends? For WeberHodelFeder, a footwear brand named after its three founders’ last names, the Flemish city, with its celebrated history and vibrant party scene, was more than just a practical choice.

The self-professed ‘outsider’ trio, of the Germans Matthias Weber, Florian Feder and the Swiss Niklaus Hodel, all had professional careers of their own before entering the city’s acclaimed Royal Academy of Fine Arts’ Fashion Department. As a result, 'each of us contributes with a specific skill set', says Weber, responding to how the exchange of ideas between the three best friends takes place.

WeberHodelFeder were scooped up by seminal footwear store Coccodrillo before even having properly set up their company, and the success of their signature men’s Velcro shoe was so big with both genders that they were convinced to produce them in smaller sizes for women.

Fixated on creating 'objects that have a story to tell, or even better that stimulate one’s fantasy in order to invent a story', WHF 'strives for the perfect mistake in our design'. 'We take inspiration from something flawless,' Weber continues, 'mix it with something not necessarily matching, change the personality of the object into something that ideally hasn’t existed before.'

For A/W 2016, they take that concept further. 'For the first time we worked with existing garments, cutting them apart or recreating a first prototype of a loafer that we had flipped inside out,' Weber explains. 'The "battle memories" – doodle prints – are inspired by a beautiful book that Matthias found, with photographs of soldier’s graffiti on canvas bags documenting their drawn talismans and stories of victory and loss.'

The scans through which the collection is rendered in the lookbook is the trio's comment on how 'we are so used to see fashion in small scale on tiny screens until we actually go to the store', Weber concludes. 'The idea was to show the details of our shoes in their actual size without any distraction by other clothing.'

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the WeberHodelFeder website

A recently opened show at the Retromuseum in Cheb, Czech Republic, celebrates the history and design legacy of the historical sports shoe brand Botas. In 2008 graphic design students Jan Kloss and Jakup Korouš, then studying at UMPRUM in Prague, launched its sub-label Botas 66.

After a few years of designing their own colorful Botas 66 sneakers in collaboration with the original company, the duo – with their own creative producer and design organiser Darina Zavadilová – curated a retrospective exhibition to commemorate the rich history of this winning shoe brand.

The show is the Retromuseum's first retrospective (the museum focuses on documenting and researching mid-century lifestyle in the former Czechoslovakia), presenting several historical and thematic chapters of Botas' history and design.

Established in 1949 in the small town of Skuteč in East Bohemia, the company was a bestseller for Czech professional and amateur sportspeople. It became a true icon of Czech consumer production in 1966 with the launch of the legendary 'Classic' indoor model. That design was the main inspiration behind the launching of Botas 66.

The exhibition presents historical models of myriad different shoes – for running, ice skating, athletics, cycling, boxing and hiking – as well as vintage graphic design presentations and adverts featuring bold typefaces and dynamic illustrations. Product development and factory ephemera, and vintage social imagery of Botas shoes are also on display.

The colourful installation, conceived by Kloss and Matěj Činčera, channels classic Botas colour schemes. A dynamic use of Colorplan paper-covered columns hold both exhibits and contextual information. Also available is an accompanying catalogue, featuring a selection of interviews, essays and unique, never-before-published visual material.

INFORMATION

'When shoes then Botas!' runs until 31 August. For more information, visit the Retromuseum's website

ADDRESS

Retromuseum
Náměstí Krále Jiřího z Poděbrad 17,
Cheb

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There is such a fine line between a successful shoe design rising to become a house signature or being washed over by fast and furious It shoe fame. Italian cobbler Francesco Russo knows both tales.

The Pulia-born creative, who established his own eponymous luxury shoe brand in 2013, honed his craft at Costume National and Miu Miu in Milan before moving to Paris to Yves Saint Laurent, where he created the infamous Tribute sandal and Cage boot during Stefano Pilati’s tenure, before joining Sergio Rossi as creative director.

For his own maison, Russo’s sensual signature pertains to the elongated heel-piece of his pumps and sandals – his way of connecting the shoe with the curve of the leg – creating a striking silhouette from behind. His other unifying characteristic is the subtle waxing he gives his leathers, which range from tiger snake to crocodile and lizard that he favours in subtle off-shades of olive, muted cobalt, rust and mustard. ‘If you see the shoes there is a little shine on them,’ he says, visiting London for the day. ‘It’s exactly like they finish on men’s shoes: I wouldn’t say vintage looking, but with nuances and this is because we do it by hand.’

All of Russo’s shoes are made in his atelier in Italy, including the bespoke commissions he takes from his Paris atelier/store on rue de Valois. Now Russo is rolling out this 6-week made-to-order service in London with Harvey Nichols. Eleven styles will be offered in either leather or croc with the option of twenty colourways: ‘I think it’s important that whenever the brand moves around the world we carry the atelier philosophy with us and this means giving the service we are able to give in Paris,’ he says.

‘It’s art with a function,’ he adds of his craft, ‘and that function is to make people dream because fashion is about doing things that are not crucial, we are not doing things that are fundamental for people. Food is, water is, shoes are not crucial so the only reason why people buy them is because they have this emotional feeling towards them.’ Offering a bespoke service where clients can touch and feel his luxurious components is quite naturally the next step to nurture this notion.

INFORMATION

For more informaiton, visit the Harvey Nichols website

Photography courtesy Harvey Nichols and Francesco Russo

Eytys isn’t just another effortlessly cool Swedish export. Its clear vision of practical, yet inimitably stylish footwear reimagines sportswear staples for Gen X as much as Gen Y. And for its latest shoe collaboration, the Scando brand (pronounced 'eighties') has travelled further afoot to South Africa, to work with contemporary artist Esther Mahlangu.

The 80-year-old’s large-scale, graphic paintings have won global acclaim over the years, in the process catapulting the often-neglected South African art scene onto the world stage. Mahlangu’s community, the Ndebele people, were regionally renowned for a custom called ukugwala – the wall painting of the outside of one’s home and a practice passed down from mother to daughter over the centuries. When Mahlangu’s own highly decorative abode made waves throughout South Africa, international art critics began to take notice. 'Esther plays with elements from both traditional and contemporary art,' says Max Schiller, Eytys' creative director and co-founder. 'Her work is bold, straightforward and striking.'

The grandeur of Mahlangu’s bold colour clashes and mesmerising geometrical shapes has seen the artist’s work exhibited at Paris’ Centre Pompidou and Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum alike; it even emblazons one of BMW’s iconic art cars, alongside titans such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Jeff Koons. No mean feat for the once unknown ‘Art Woman’, as her local community dubbed her.

This collaboration sees Eytys' 'Doja' sneakers sporting an embroidered version of Mahlangu’s colourful designs on each shoe’s side, along with her autograph. From Sweden to South Africa, Eytys seem set on producing culture-clashing shoes for a globalised world – here’s hoping for plenty more collaborations to come. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Eytys  website

Photography: Travys Owen & Esther Mahlangu

While big fashion brands have the luxury of working with fancy architects on store and showroom spaces, new brands often don’t have the cash for such extravagances. Luckily a lack of funds had no detrimental impact on the London Mayfair headquarters and showroom of Malone Souliers, a niche footwear label launched in February 2014 by Mary Alice Malone and Roy Luwolt.

‘It was a lot of work but we kind of enjoyed it all,’ says Luwolt of the in-house design operation. ‘We just picked up ideas from restaurants, bars and films we liked.’ Functioning as both a VIP lounge for their bespoke footwear customers as well as a press showroom, the space has a cosy, curated feel. It is populated with a colourful mix of vintage and custom made furniture, including a pair of bright blue and white Gio Ponti armchairs, re-edited by Molteni, Jean Prouvé’s Cite chair, a pink velvet vintage armchair, and a Mayor of London pink sofa.

Small brogue tables and thin brass stools function as shelving for the brand’s high-end, high heeled shoes, along with a vintage 1940s glass vitrine with steel legs. The space is relatively small so it could get uninteresting really quickly,’ says Luwolt. ‘I hate retail spaces that look like retail spaces. I wanted a more conversational environment.’

Prior to segueing her talents into footwear design, Malone studied architecture in Colorado. Her eye for the unusual keeps things fresh in the space. One wall has been lacquered a shiny juicy orange and features custom-made bronze shelving and support rods. Another wall is covered with over 3,500 tiny oak wood chips that were hand carved over a seven-month period by an English artisan commissioned by Malone and Luwolt. The octagon shaped chips were carefully applied in an uneven wall formation, while another cluster of them slowly seeps over the ceiling. ‘It’s the one thing everyone is curious about,’ Luwolt says. ‘But it really has to do with our hand crafted work, it’s an expression of that.’

Malone Souliers is now taking the imprint and unfurling it on a string of new retail ventures, most recently in Paris and soon to arrive in New York and Miami.

INFORMATION

For more information visit Malone Souliers’ website

James Ferragamo, director of women’s leather products at Ferragamo, enlisted innovative young shoe designer Edgardo Osorio to create a capsule collection inspired by the brand’s vast archive, aided by Ferragamo’s creative director Massimiliano Giornetti. The 14-piece collection includes heels featuring signature Ferragamo details, such as dots, cork and bows

There are practical reasons why iconic Italian leather goods brand Salvatore Ferragamo teamed up with Colombian-born, Florentine-based footwear designer Edgardo Osorio for a new capsule shoe collection. ‘He lives next door!’ laughs James Ferragamo, Salvatore’s grandson and director of the brand’s women’s leather goods. It’s true that both brands are situated on the same street in Florence, but the pairing, the first for Ferragamo, is aligned on a much deeper level.

Osorio, whose own Aquazzura label has shot to international hotness in just four years, started his career, at the age of 19, over a decade ago at Ferragamo’s footwear atelier, where he met Ferragamo’s current creative director Massimiliano Giornetti. The experience left an indelible impression on the designer. ‘There’s nothing like the Ferragamo archive,’ says Osorio of the 14,000 pairs of perfectly preserved shoes. ‘They have everything in there. He did everything. And he did it first.’ Indeed, Salvatore Ferragamo is the spiritual godfather of modern footwear. His inventions with innovative materials such as cork, jute, straw, cellophane and fishing line, as well as radical silhouettes such as massive platforms, were seismic back in the 1940s and continue to shake the catwalks today.

For the new 14-piece collection, Osorio plucked many of these groundbreaking elements from Ferragamo’s past but added elements of Latin exuberance. Ferragamo’s signature cork and polka dots are now incorporated into chunky mid-heel sandals. The brand’s famous bows have been repositioned as three metal sculptures on the back of stilettos, while wing details were taken from Ferragamo advertising campaign illustrations from the 1950s. Ferragamo’s most iconic shoe, the rainbow wedge, has been reinterpreted in charming dégradé encrusted stones.

Pulling in a foreign hired gun might be considered sacrilegious at the House of Ferragamo, but James Ferragamo insists the brand is ‘open-minded’. ‘Everybody contributes to fashion today,’ he says. ‘It’s not just one brand, one designer. Fashion is bigger than that.’ 

As originally featured in the December 2015 issue of Wallpaper* (W*201)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Ferragamo’s website, or Aquazzura’s website

Still life photography: Joss McKinley

When it comes to shoes, does the product prevail, or the emotion that brought it into existence? The exhibition Footprint: The Tracks of Shoes in Fashion, which opens today at Antwerp’s Fashion Museum (MoMu), gathers about 600 pairs of shoes from the 20th and 21st century, in order to map their imprint via the personalities that shaped them.

This angle took shape thanks to the collection of shoes that Belgian retail pioneers Geert Bruloot and his partner Eddy Michiels have amassed since opening their footwear boutique Coccodrillo in Antwerp in 1983 – an era when emotion ran high during fashion shows.

Complemented by loans from other museums, Footprint avoids a product-focused approach, thanks to its theme-based set up and attention to individual designers. 'Nowadays, everything has become a product,' Bruloot explains. 'There’s an it-bag, there’s an it-shoe, but the human aspect has got lost. We wanted to discover the person behind the shoe.' Under the artistic eye of Dodi Espinosa, a coherent concept and scenography was developed, complete with film shorts and imagery that provide an immersive backdrop.

In any other context it would be surprising to find shoes designed by Vivienne Westwood, Patrick Cox and Roger Vivier sharing an exhibition space with a work by Ai Weiwei, but Footprint pulls that off. The varied collection and the connections that are made between art, popular culture and history are testament to Bruloot’s love of showing others the things that fill him with enthusiasm, a trait that first led him to open his boutiques. (He and Michiels also founded Louis in 1986, where they were the first to sell the debut collections of Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester and other Antwerp designers.)

As he walks Wallpaper* through the exhibition, Bruloot raves about Tokio Kumagai, the late Japanese designer whose shoes with embroidered eye details can be found in the ‘Surrealism’ and ‘Pop’ sections. On the continent, Bruloot hugely respects the Italians for their matchless technique in creating the best lasts. 'But,' he continues, 'the Belgians have always been intellectual, the Italians glamourous, the French elegant. There’s a variety of reasons why designer makes an impact. Ann Demeulemeester’s footwear was strong and interesting from the very start. It’s a gift. Some have it and some don’t.'

Benoît Méléard, an experimental French shoe designer that many look to for inspiration is honoured with a separate focus, as is Pierre Hardy with his strong graphic designs and Thierry Mugler, whose architectural shoes made waves in the 1980s. Innovative constructions are highlighted in a Balenciaga Lego heel, but also in Dirk Bikkemberg’s famous thick-soled boots with holed heels, through which laces are drawn. Simone Rocha and Tabitha Simmons represent modern glamour and elegance.

Jan Jansen, a Dutch designer who in the Sixties worked anonymously for Christian Dior and Charles Jourdan will be a surprise discovery for many, as will the atypical designs of Azzedine Alaïa and Manolo Blahnik – not their usual stiletto heels but chunky wedges and cowhide ankle boots.

Footprint shows shoe design on and off the beaten tracks. 'I’m sure some people will be quick to ask, "but can you walk in these?"' smiles Bruloot, pointing to the fetish pumps and stiletto ballerina’s Manolo Blahnik created for David Lynch. 'But that’s not the point. This is not an exhibition about the comfortable shoe. It’s about creativity and it’s about an experience.'

ADDRESS

MoMu
Nationalestraat 28, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

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Now that the weather in Milan is officially frosty, guests of Sergio Rossi were more than happy to gather inside the cozy, Christmas-lit confines of 10 Corso Como for the Italian footwear brand's homage to Memphis design.

Creative Director Francesco Russo, whose Spring 2013 collection was inspired by the bold graphics of the Milanese design collective, oversaw the 'Sergio Rossi Meets Memphis' installation in Corso Como's upstairs gallery, where fashion snuggled up happily with design.

Displayed on black and white pedestals covered in signature Memphis patterns, the Sergio Rossi shoes were alluringly set off by vintage glassware and table top items, loaned from Galleria Memphis di Milano.

After the exhibit, Russo and Sergio Rossi CEO Christope Melard hosted an intimate dinner downstairs for guests such as Franca Sozzani, Carla Sozzani, Nina Yashar, Andrea Pompilio, Teresa Missoni, Luca Guadagnino, and Saturnino. 

It's been awhile since we've eaten at Corso Como 10 and the report card came back stellar: full-flavoured, soft pillows of mozzarella di buffala cheese were followed by a fresh tartar of tuna with hearty chunks of ripe avocado (rarer than an oil well in Milan), pumpkin filled ravioli and the best panettone in town, handpicked from Pasticceria Marchesi and served with a soft, sweet cream. Our stomachs are officially ready for Mama's holiday spread.