Seeing as when I last "designed" something, I added a hee-hee to Tee, I thought i'd do the same with Shoe. Actually, designing is rather a loose term for the t-shirt I did for Borders & Frontiers. Collaging? Curating? I suppose they're all very buzzy words to be touting these days.
I don't want to say I DESIGNED a shoe and talk about lofty influences. I had a bunch of things I wanted to incoporate that reminded me of this hanging out in Camden when I was wee teen - dodgy yellow patent trousers, fluffy fake fur backpacks and then I wanted to do a shoe that is sort of like my ugly David Bowie silver platform shoes, which I stomp around in constantly because the heel platform is so comfy. With all that combined, hopefully the effect is that you either love it or hate it. My main objective was to do a shoe that doesn't really exist out there in shoeland, be it high or lwo. That may well be for a good reason, depending on how you feel about the combo of lilac ponyskin, neon yellow patent and tan leather. You're probably all a bit whatevs about it. It's ok to have indifference or hatred towards said combo by the by.
Just to recap, Six London, the company behind the production of shoes for brands like bStore and Opening Ceremony asked six bloggers to participate in a shoe collaboration project whereby we got to design our dream shoes. It's not so much a commercial project as it is a fun/creative one where we go to design the shoe that we'd wear as only twenty pairs will go into production, so if the likelihood is that I'm the only person who loves my own shoe, that's all find and dandy. I've already blah-ed on about the whole 'assuming the position of designer' thing here, so I'll save my breath.
I'm probably going to contradict myself in saying I didn't DESIGN a thing, seeing as I did knock up a moodboard for the purpose of helping Six London's in-house designer Simona Citarella (who like I said has her own fantastic line of shoes now...) to 'get' the idea of what the shoe is vibing off of...
My original sketch image thingy had a back section that sort of wraps around the back to make it into more of a mid-calf boot but in the end, I thought there was already a lot going on to say the least. Ditto for the karibiner fixture although I think I was just using the shoe as an excuse to bung a karibiner on. The wood grain leather was alas an ambitious feat, with the time constraints so I went for a plain tan leather instead.
Simona Citarella's much prettier sketch of the shoe that was being worked on as a first prototype...
The first samples/second prototypes are back and we had a wee launch for them in Paris on Monday night where I got to see the shoe in person for the first time, hold it in my hand and get excited about wearing it (all instances where I have neon yellow and lilac in my wardrobe are being quickly scanned through in my head...). The curve on the heel at the back was a touch I didn't anticipate but actually gives the shoe more symmetry. The lilac ponyskin is going to be slightly less pinky and more purply when it does go into its limited production run of 20.
