ecco shoe stories

shoestories

walking the talk

shoe stories

design, editorMichael Frederiksen, Spin Doc Design

process and portrait photosMichael Frederiksen

photos of final shoesPatricia Oczki

translationMarianne Baggesen HilgerBarnabas Wetton

ISBN 978-87-90775-34-6

© 2012

kolding school of designÅgade 10

6000 Kolding+45 76301100

[email protected]

department of product designHead of Department - Mathilde Aggebo

Head of Development – Mette DalbyLecturers – Else Skjold, Kristine Mandsberg,

Marianne Britt Jørgensen, Kåre Birk, Helle Graabæk, Bente Elmer, Marloes ten Bhömer, D’Wayne Edwards and Michael Frederiksen

The shoe stories workshop is part of the strategic collaboration between Kolding School of Design and ECCO. This book was printed with support from ECCO.

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shoestories

the fantastic thing about shoes is that we all have them; and often we have more than one pair. Physically we are close to them, and we prefer some shoes to others; some shoes we save for special occasions and some shoes we just have but never wear.

Kolding School of Design’s knowledge base rests on three pillars that generate knowledge about design to society and to the education. These pillars are research, art, and practice.

A few years ago, ECCO and Kolding School of

Design entered a strategic partnership agreement. Both parties are very happy with the agreement, which is a double eye-opener: ECCO is given the opportunity to beat the drum for shoe design and is able to become inspired by the way unspoiled and up-to-the-minute designers set the tone for the shoe design of tomorrow. Kolding School of Design receives valuable insight into the terms and conditions of working for a company, and students gain knowledge about company strategy and organisation and the designer’s role from product development to production and sale. They also receive a concept reality check in terms of an existing brand, production machinery, and

a potential market. Overall, the collaboration represents an important element in our knowledge base concerning design practice.

For this year’s course the students have taken their point of departure in the shoe stories of other people. It is one thing what designers and trends dictate that shoes should look like; what you and I have to share about our relationship with our own, personal shoe wardrobe is something entirely different. How can this knowledge be used to design new shoe collections that make sense? This book offers a number of suggestions.

telling shoe stories Mathilde AggeboHead of Department of Product Design

Kolding School of Design

Designing a shoe is just as much about contributing to a story which can become closely linked to one person. Why do we buy the shoes we do? Which shoes do we like? What is it we like about our shoes? Which shoes do we never wear? What do we feel that our shoes tell about us? These are some of the research questions that the students presented to a selected group of shoe users. Subsequently, they transformed their collected data material into shoe collections. Each group then materialised two pairs of shoes; a men’s shoe and a women’s shoe.

Thus, shoe design at Kolding School of Design becomes about much more than adding shape,

material, and expression to a piece of garment which protects and supports the foot. In terms of design research the collaboration also generates entirely new knowledge about shoe design as we have set up a research and development project based on designer Else Skjold’s PhD project concerning men and fashion.

We are thrilled at the chance that we and ECCO have been given to explore shoes from a variety of angles, and throughout our collaboration we have collected a wide range of knowledge. Part of this knowledge we have made available in the present publication: PhD Fellow Else Skjold contributes

an article concerning the wardrobe method thus returning research-based knowledge to ECCO. Designers and teachers Helle Graabæk and Michael Frederiksen contribute an article about the grammar of the shoe. Finally, for this year’s course we had the pleasure of welcoming a number of prominent guest speakers who contributed knowledge about how to design and produce shoes and shoe collections, applying commercial as well as artistic perspectives. Shoe designers and guest teachers D’Wayne Edwards and Marloes ten Bhömer kindly share some of their personal insights in this book.

process: narrationThe process takes its point of departure in interviews with selected users who are asked to share their life story with shoes. All of the interviews contain useful anecdotes or surprising points which constitute the basic idea behind each of the shoe designs. Often, the story from the interview cannot be read directly in the end result, but is reflected in the entire design process.

process: universeLong before the shoe takes on its final shape, the universe surrounding the shoe is formed. The moodboard represents a powerful tool for describing the sensory world of visual impressions, sounds, smells, tactility and stories that the shoe will carry in its design.

process: material samplesWhile the moodboards help set the emotional tone of the design universe, material samples are systematically collected in order to determine the tactile space that will surround the design process.

process: material bendingThe collected materials are experimented on freely and coyly: Leather is cauterised, stretched, perforated; textiles are torn, melted, burned, dipped in plaster; wood is splintered; shoe sketches are made from sweets, pasta, tin foil, cardboard, and old bread crumbs. All of this to reach a material tactility which supports the basic story of the shoe.

process: material development

The cross-disciplinary project groups consist of students from the fields of industrial design, fashion and textile. In the phase of the design process where new materials and combinations are developed, the skills of the textile designers prove themselves particularly useful.

process: concept sketchingPaper sketches and quick sketch models like the ones displayed on the pages to the right of this section constitute the primary tool for shaping the proper formulation of the story of the shoe.

process: form developmentThe concept sketching phase is followed by the form development phase. Here, the mode of expression is developed and matured into an expression of form which, combined with the selected and specially developed materials, comes close to the expression of the finished shoe.

process: modelling on the lastShoes are three-dimensional objects, and even though pencil sketches and material collages can take the sketching process far, the shoe must be processed as a spatial object. One of the simplest and most efficient methods is for the shoe designer to work directly on a last covered in masking tape.

process: virtual modellingAnother efficient tool is computer modelling using two-dimensional and three-dimensional programs. Computer programs lack the tactility of a physical model; however they are able to produce realistic visual models far quicker than you would in the physical model workshop.

process: visual sole model Often, in the design process, the sole will be modelled by hand using a hard material simulating a visual illusion of a casted rubber sole. This is faster than casting a real sole and is sufficient to assess the visual qualities of the shoe.

process: advanced soleIn order to convey the design it may be necessary to cast the sole using a material which simulates the qualities of the production material; for instance, when the flexibility of the shoe is an important part of the design story or the designer works with a transparent sole.

process: structural subjectsThe bearing elements of the shoe are modelled using hard materials. The structural subjects will typically consist of high heels or soles that are more advanced than the traditional sole, whereas experimental shoe designs may use outright exoskeletons and the like.

process: leather and textilesCutting and three-dimensional shaping of leather and textile subjects for the upper part of the shoe is something completely different. Leather is immensely suited for modelling and gives the designer ample opportunity to construct the elements for the most visible part of the shoe.

process: stitching and final fittingLeather elements and textiles constituting the upper part of the shoe are stitched together using special sewing machines. In this process, the stitches and the colour of the thread become an integral part of the design look which the designer can either choose to accentuate or play down in his/her narration. Finally, the upper part is attached to the sole and the shoe model is finished

process: photo shoot and communicationThe narration does not end with the finished shoe model: After finishing the model, the intent and qualities of the design must be communicated to the audience in the best possible way. Styling, model shoots, and text writing are part of this process and are collected in an accessible, digital format. The shoe designer’s story is complete.

the shoe stories

shoes are what carry us through life and across the surface of the Earth. The shape and ma-terial of the heel influence the way we walk. Wheth-er it is the mincing of the stilettos, the trudging of the hiking shoes, or the trampling of the boots, the movements of the body originate in the feet. The way our feet curve in the high-heel or the way they touch the ground in the flat shoe stimulate certain body movements that help define our cultural reality and who we are. Shoes also produce sounds: wear-ing a high-heel you can walk across a room and be sure to be seen and heard; a soft sole allows you to sneak away unnoticed. We all decide what to wear – including our footwear – based on how we feel in the world and how we wish to be perceived. The feeling of wearing the ‘right’ outfit is very subjec-tive; it is based on our own assessment of what is suitable within our family, our circle of friends, our work environment, and the general community but

also on how we like the outfit to feel. Some attach great importance to looks while others give priority to physical comfort. These two parameters are of equal importance when we select what to wear and gradually develop our own individual taste; not least when it comes to shoes.

All of these aspects are part of conducting a ward-robe study where one looks at a variety of param-eters such as sustainability, gender, ethnicity, or ethical and moral values that influence the person in a given society – and hence the person’s dress practice. These years, fashion and dress schol-ars, including myself, are developing the wardrobe method as a way of establishing a research frame-work for the use and practice concerning clothing. The wardrobe is interesting because this is where we keep the things that we put on before going out into the world. Over the years, we perfect our sense of personal preference in an on-going pro-

cess of deciding what to keep and what to throw away. The collection of dresses, trousers, jackets and coats, shirts and sweaters, ties, jewellery, and shoes that we keep in our closets at home represent how we perceive ourselves in relation to the rest of the world. Thus, the wardrobe represents the place from where you can put into perspective the ’small world’ and compare it to the ‘big world’ by studying the clothing.

The perspective throughout the ECCO workshop was to create design through the wardrobe. There-fore, we asked the students to conduct small-scale wardrobe studies which they were later to use to generate ideas for a design process. They were asked to look particularly for details in materials or notions of physical comfort among the users they were studying in order to have something concrete to work with. When plunging into the private ward-robes they discovered a world of subjective ideas

the wardrobe methodfrom your shoe to my shoe

Else Skjold PhD Fellow


about comfort and appearance revealed in personal life stories. Personal user attitudes, stories and pref-erences are not used directly in the student designs and therefore the term user-driven innovation does not apply in the traditional sense where you often use lead users. Rather, this could be categorised as user-inspired design where sentences, movements, details, and emotions are converted to a new form. Exactly the ways designers usually work, only this time they are inspired by entirely ordinary people. The fragments from the personal stories of the stu-dents’ wardrobe studies were applied on an ab-stract level:

- The woman who records her life in a diary and keeps it hidden from others turned into a shoe that enables the user to see his/her foot looking down but does not allow others to see it from the side.

- A woman explained how she does not like it when

you can see the ’toe roots’ – the gap between the toes – and this turned into a shoe project about roots and grounding.

- A man complained that his shoes chafed in certain places. The students turned this story into a shoe where all of the pain-inducing surfaces and points are cut out leaving an airy and perforated shoe.

- The grandmother who believed she would break her leg if she wore high-heels resulted in a heel con-structed from broken bone parts.

The stories involve deeply personal matters, specific practical problems concerning footwear, or subjec-tive preferences of taste. The stories emerged dur-ing the interviews when the students asked the par-ticipants to take out their shoes and describe them; different shoes they had had for some time or had kept even though they had stopped using them;

shoes that for some reason did not feel comfort-able, or favourite shoes that had carried them during important times. Stories about what it is that makes one particular pair of shoes your favourite. The start-ing point was the shoes in the users’ wardrobes. Hence, wardrobe studies like the ones described above should be regarded as a way to kick-off the design process. Where a designer would tradition-ally research materials or search for inspiration under foreign skies, in style history, art, or nature, etc., the wardrobe method brings out the personal stories and emotions of users concerning their shoe collections and has these serve as the basis for a new design. The wardrobe method is a method for the designer to become inspired not by (the usual) idealised, perfect fashionable body and our notion of how this looks and moves but by a body that lives with the ’flaws’ and qualities that we all share.

mia strøbechrené petersenaja marie skyum

Shoes can hurt and feel too small. If you cut out the pain-inducing parts of the shoes you are still protected and safely in contact with the ground below you.

The transparent soles of the collection underline the vulnerability of the foot. The high sole in the women’s shoe creates the illusion of a high-heel; like the ones men would like women to wear but which women avoid because of the pain.

alysha paiarolise beckmanncaroline middelboe

Controlled silence is the main underlying theme of our shoe designs. They are inspired by one user’s expressed aversion to wearing shoes that make sounds while walking. We have explored the different sounds a shoe makes; how to control the type of sound and the intensity on different types of surfaces. Crackles, thumps and echoes are easy to make but a silent step is much harder to achieve. It requires a high level of control over the placement and movement of your steps, as well over how the shoe interacts with itself, you, and the environment.

From this point we have developed our collection under the theme of controlled silence. The preying cat is the inspirational archetype. Its highly controlled movements and soft, padded feet that produce completely silent steps represent ideal performance goals for the collection.

christian leth amalie bendixenemilie brinch

We want to express the inner child’s unpredictable, contrast-filled, and intuitive universe in a collection of

shoes for both men and women.

The men’s sandal is made from two different kinds of leather and has a transparent sole with coloured

shattered glass. The women’s sneaker-like shoe is made from crocheted plastic yarn, leather

with different surfaces, silk organza and has a transparent sole with shattered glass inside.

d’wayne edwards is former footwear de-sign director at Jordan Brand, senior footwear de-signer at Nike, and designer at Sketchers and LA Gear. The latter hired him when he was only 19, making him the youngest footwear designer in the industry. In his 22-year long career, he has received several design awards, designed more than 500 styles and owns 30 patents. More than one billion of his designs have been sold worldwide. Moreover, he is the creator of the Future Sole Footwear Design competition for high school and college students worldwide.

In 2010, D’Wayne Edwards launched one of the first footwear design schools in the USA, PENSOLE School of Footwear Design, in partnership with Par-sons The New School for Design in New York and Art Center College of Design in California.

In November 2011, D’Wayne Edwards attended the international design seminar Shoe Design – State of the Art at Kolding School of Design and gave a talk about new materials and new applications based on the story of his personal design tool, NO.2 Pencil. Did your participation in the ECCO project in any way inspire you?

Yes, it did! First, I was very impressed with Kolding School of Design. I wish I could attend your school. Seriously, I have visited several of the top design schools in the U.S. and Kolding was very inspiring. As for the ECCO programme, it was an honour for me to be selected as a guest speaker because it allowed me to learn from the other guest speak-ers. There was an impressive collection of talented designers. I wish we had a programme like that in

the U.S. because what ECCO is doing is very smart and unlike any other company I have seen in my 22 years in this business. With this programme, ECCO is investing into the future of their brand by creat-ing a pipeline of local talent for future employment, investing in the future of education at Kolding and the future of the footwear industry. That is amazing! I loved how open-minded and creative Kolding stu-dents were. Danish design is refreshing and pure. In my opinion the way design should be. That was inspiring to me. I must add that Denmark is a beauti-ful country with wonderful people that made me feel very welcome. I hope I get to return soon.

How do you use storytelling in your design process?

In my opinion you cannot have a good design with-out telling a good story. I begin my design process

d’wayne edwardsshoes are a 360 ̊experience

Charlotte MelinJournalist


with a story and let that story guide me the entire way. I believe in order to be a good designer you must open your mind to new experiences to create new solutions. If you embrace this concept, every product you create will have a story to tell.

How do you bring into play the narrative elements that a shoe holds?

When I design a new shoe, I’m giving birth to a new experience I want my consumer to discover and I take everything into consideration down to a single stitch. It’s important for me to design every shoe as a 360˚ experience because it allows me to share compelling stories with my consumers. Please, give an example of a narrative that resulted in a finished shoe or a detail of a shoe.

When I design a shoe for a particular athlete, I try to tell the personal and professional story of that ath-lete through every detail. For example, I designed a shoe for NBA Superstar Carmelo Anthony. At the time, he was wearing #15 so I asked him to describe himself in 15 words. Once I got those 15 words from him, I made those words into a graphic that looked like his thumbprint. In this example, I connected his personal life (the words he gave me) and his profes-sional life (#15), to give the consumer a better un-derstanding of who he is through a simple graphic. What instruments do you use to communicate your particular intention with a given shoe?

I like to use a combination of personal and profes-sional elements presented in a way that you discov-er them. Good storytelling takes you on a journey

with new discoveries along the way. I like my de-signs to teach you something new every time you experience it. How can consumers use shoes to create personal stories that represent who they are?

We naturally tell stories with everything we wear. If you give five people the same outfit to wear, they will each wear it differently. That makes us storytell-ers. Some of us communicate this louder than oth-ers. I simply see my role as a designer to give the consumer more options to be who they are.

alice topartpatrick johansendagny grimsdottir

The collection is inspired by the ballerina’s struggle with herself and her art. Ballerinas are icons of strength and elegance but behind the strong body and the graceful exterior is a mind that must be able to withstand the critique, the training, the demands, and the expectations.

Our project displays these contrasts; the body is represented in the powerful exterior shape showing tight muscles, elegant shapes, and strong materials while the mind is represented in the look and condition of the materials; materials that are stretched, twisted, sweating and on the verge of bursting.

Thus, the shoes appear strong and firm but looking closer, the pain behind the robust exterior is revealed. As such, the collection also serves as a prelude to the grand finale beginning with an everyday shoes appetizer and ending with our final models displaying our concept in its purest form.

david gehrt morten schmidt ussing line jensen

The head over heels project:.

Wearing shoes is a state of mind and a matter of appearance.

eva sofia audelyuba halachevapernille sax

Our collection comes from the dusty universe of the prairie, from the drought and the hot sun that burns its way into the skin, leaving a wrinkled furrow pattern, the worn scorched skin contrasting the soft blue sky. Heavy cowboy boots walking slowly leaving a small dust cloud behind the man. A woman is looking at him from the porch in front of the saloon, judging him by the size of his spores.

The idea of the collection is to translate this attitude and aura into present time urban environment. We use rubber soles as a symbol of modern everyday footwear and combine them with the rough leather associated with Clint Eastwood’s weathered face in old spaghetti westerns.

The women’s shoe is a medium-high pump with a pale blue rubber sole and heel. The front is decorated with a voluminous cut-up leather formation, mimicking a dust cloud. The shoe is brown-reddish leather with a bit of shine, referring to the rough skin of a person that is out on the prairie every day. The lining and the inner sole are soft light blue leather, contrasting the warm shiny red-brown on the outside. The heel is short, broad and sturdy, offering stability and comfort.

The men’s shoe is composed from a pale blue rubber outer sole fused with a leather top. The leather is dark matte brown consisting of several pieces tailored to wrap comfortably around the foot. The inner sole is pale blue leather. The construction is inspired by sneakers, while the leather is rough and inspired by old cowboy boots.

solveig stilling ida blomstrømiben thode johansen

Our collection is based on the story of a boy who gets a long sharp nail through his sneakers. It leaves a big hole and penetrates the skin on his foot.

For this collection we have worked with the contrast between the soft rubber material and the hard and protective metal. The space around the collection’s

shoes is pierced with sharp nails in a big jumble. It is titillating to the human eye that there is such a short distance between the bare skin on the foot and the nails moulded into the rubber soles. It also creates an ironic ambiguity which

makes the contrast between pain and humour even more distinct.

The asymmetric laces of the men’s boot

direct attention to the nails moulded into the

sole. They continue on the nose and signal protection

and support. The heel is transparent and almost melts

together with the sole.

The women’s boot is closest to our starting idea of walking on nails, because the nails in the heel look like they protrude through the foot. The front piece of transparent latex is extended down to the toes to direct attention to the foot and the bare skin and to underline the contrast to the metal.

kathrine gram hvejsellouise egebrolise søgaard

The body shoe, uniting foot and body while playing on imagery from the straightjacket, is the result of working with the three opposing themes of looking different, being normal, and feeling misunderstood.

dutch-born designer Marloes ten Bhömer is not your typical shoe designer. Her efforts to push the boundaries for what a shoe can look like has created quite a stir in the world of fashion where shoes are usually produced according to a fixed set of principles: there’s a sole, an upper sole and a heel.

Marloes ten Böhmer thinks more like a sculptor and does not follow in anyone’s footsteps. A shoe takes its starting point in a tightly constructed narration entitled shoe. Still, why must we even call it a shoe? she asks. The name blocks new ideas, new ways of designing a shoe.

Marloes ten Böhmer graduated from Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem in 2001 and holds an

MA in product design from Royal College of Art in London. She has her own workshop in London where she designs her elaborate shoes which she sells on her website at prices around DKK 20,000.

Marloes ten Böhmer’s shoes have been featured in a number of fashion and design magazines and have been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Modemuseum Hasselt and Krannert Art Museum, Illinois, among other places. She teaches at a number of design schools and works with design and sustainability for Adidas, among others.

Her works consistently aim to challenge generic typologies of women’s shoes through experiments with non-traditional technologies and material techniques. By reinventing the process by which

footwear is made, the resulting shoes serve as unique examples of new aesthetic and structural possibilities and to criticise the conventional status of women’s shoes as cultural objects.

Her research into feet and footwear has resulted in a variety of experimental conceptual pieces, some of which have been developed into technically sound shoes; others are produced solely as sculptural pieces. The existence of both directions within her practice generates a layer to the work that comments on the perception of functionality, and the context within which they sit – in galleries, museums, or boutiques – and challenges the audiences’ preconceptions about the shoe.

In November 2011, Marloes ten Bhömer visited

marloes ten bhömerusing narratives in shoe design

Charlotte MelinJournalist


Kolding to give a talk at the international shoe semi-nar Shoe Design – State of the Art organised by Kolding School of Design.

How do you use storytelling in your design process?

One of the most interesting parts of the design process to me is coming up with the concept for a project. To do research, to learn from other disciplines and other methodologies and see what this could mean for the design practice now and in the future. I absolutely detest when research ends up as a mere aesthetic starting point for a project and therefore find it essential that the work itself or writing about the work deals with the context as set by the research. I’m not sure whether I would call it storytelling, but the work needs to express the concept.

How do you bring into play the narrative elements that a shoe holds?

The concepts are expressed through details in the works themselves such as creating techniques, form, materials, etc. and the context in which the works are shown: film, photography, installations in gallery settings or commercial settings and the combinations of contexts.

Please, give an example of a narrative that resulted in a finished shoe or a detail of a shoe.

More recently the conceptual starting points deal with ideas I have about manufacturing, structure, methodology and translating these into an object or an installation. In the case of Rotationalmoulded

shoe, the technical innovation or the use of a mechanically ‘making-process’ plays a role in the concept of the installation After Hours. The Rotationalmouldedshoe is part of the After Hours installation that shows a complete, yet stylized ‘making-process’ of the Rotationalmouldedshoe. This work serves as a critique of the aesthetic and extrinsic value of mechanically produced objects versus handmade objects.

What instruments do you use to communicate your particular intention with a given shoe?

I use text, talks, photography, film, installations, the works themselves.

anna nydammads hanghøjkirsten nydam

The shoes suspend the foot in mid-air, acting like exoskeletons and turning the traditional perception of the interaction

between shoe and foot inside out.

solène panne line marie sørensenkathrine henneberg

The shoe concept revolves around the notions of static movement and the concept of ‘heellessness’. The fringed soles create a movement in place and a dream vision of a

heel which remains an icon deprived of function.

maiken klüvercamilla bragen askholmkaren marie christophersen

The project is inspired by one of our wardrobe study interviews. We spoke to a girl who explained that the reason she did not wear ‘hate ballerinas’ was that she did not like it when you could see the ‘roots of the toes’ – that is, when the gaps between the toes are showing in a pair of shoes.

The term ‘toe roots’ inspired us and we decided to take it literally. We researched facts and visual material and discovered a number of correlations between human feet and plant roots.

The roots represent the lowest part of the plant just as our feet represent the lowest part of our body. The roots grow into the ground in order to escape the light in much the same way as we hide our feet in the darkness and vacuum of our shoes. Then, when we decide to show them, we wear nice shoes to have them look their best.

We have worked with the term ’grounding’ and the fact that your feet sink into the ground when you walk barefoot. We have incorporated this in the sole by lowering the foot thus creating a sense of grounding. Feet ground humans, roots ground plants; our shoe collection is an attempt to visualise this parallel.

jacqueline de abrewtrine ostenfeldt møllermette mousten søgaard

The collection takes its point of departure in an old story told by a soldier who was out on an exercise. After a long, hard day he did not feel like walking all the way back and so he came up with the idea to tear the soles off his boots using barbwire. Having no soles left on his boots, the tired soldier was offered a ride in the jeep.

The mode of expression of the collection comes from an experiment we did where we tore the sole off an old clog boot. The recurring motif is the floating sole creating an illusory image of a heel with no real function.

nicole jørgensenjovita strobeikaite

In Wonderland things are turned upside down, everything is connected and everything is possible. The collection is the beginning of a Wonderland story when everything is just in your mind and you are still in the real world.

The shoes are the keys to your own Wonderland. They look impossible to walk in and do not have the shape of a normal shoe. Aesthetics, proportions, and details are all that matter. The collection is your bridge from reality to Wonderland.

nina lollenana odderskærrasmus gissel

The blister, filled with fluid and blood, soft and protective.

Nature’s own airbag.

the shoe is a linguistic expression; a piece of short prose, user-oriented and lyric at the same time, written in leather surfaces, shiny buckles, sole patterns, heels that strive for the sky and heels that don’t, lace textures, studs, fabric stripes, colours, stitchings, fur hems, and not least skin surfaces – the essential gaps between words that allow a glimpse of a foot or an ankle exposed in an intriguing game of hide and seek; a teasing variation between what is clearly stated and what must be read between the lines.

The shoe designer speaks shoe. Like the poet, the designer uses rhythm, line breaks, stanzas, general and local themes, metaphors, and references. The designer poaches ideas from former generations of shoe designers who each poached from their predecessors gradually building the vocabulary of visual elements that make up contemporary shoe design vernacular.

We read the shoe like a language – either we want to or not. Just as we who have grown up with Western music culture are only barely able to step out of the major/minor tonality frame of reference and perceive chords and melodies as concrete notes outside the context of a specific scale, we consider it a matter of course that we should read the visual statements of the shoe within the context of cultural history. The sailor shoe, the cowboy boot, the sneaker, the Jesus sandal, the button boot, the buffalo shoe, and the ballerina shoe all point us to specific locations within the socio-cultural landscape, and we only rarely question the common perception of where to place a given shoe within the stream of culture.

With great skill we determine its style and affiliation with a given subculture and time as a function of the shoe’s linguistic expression, and we can debate our individual, aesthetic judgment concerning a

shoe’s beauty or lack thereof because we base the decision on a common linguistic understanding.

Hence, the shoe designer can fairly expect a precise interpretation of his/her work and is able to target with great accuracy the phrasing of the shoe’s expression at specific subcultures and market segments. The fashion shoe represents the deconstructed poem, the street shoe is the churning hip hop lyrics, the soft leather shoe an everyday remark, the rubber boot a prosaic manual, and the bridle shoe an estate agent’s ad. And just as the literary genres each adhere to a set of grammar rules and expected tone of language, each shoe category is carried by an individual grammar and tone that the shoe designer must consider making sure that the target audience is directly addressed. It requires dedication and a good ear to avoid spelling mistakes and grammar complications and

the grammar of the shoe Michael FrederiksenDesigner and Guest Teacher

Spin Doc Design

Helle GraabækDesigner and Teacher


still be able to hit the clean note of the shoe genre in question – or deliberately miss it – so the design appears clear and balanced by itself and in relation to its cultural context.

We communicate with our feet on a wide range of style levels and in differing contexts of use and pick the shoe of the day based on how the language of the shoe complements our dress statement all together. The narration of the shoe can transfer the reading of a specific outfit’s placement in the fashion landscape to differing corners depending on whether the outfit is worn with pumps, sandals, or hiking boots.

However, the shoe does not only convey stories about itself and the wearer to the surroundings. The perfect shoe design also speaks directly to the heart of the users and can – with women at

least – create a state of infatuation that does not pass until the particular pair of shoes is in their possession. In situations like these, the shoe represents the beginning of a new story, perhaps a dream that does not belong to the designer but to the user: a dream of a glamorous life, about climbing mountains, getting the cool job in the boardroom, etc. The dreams and the stories that follow them are as versatile as the users who have picked the shoes.

A person’s collection of shoes often reveals a multifaceted picture of the owner: The photographer who always picks soundless sneakers to avoid attention and creating a disturbance but still dreams of owning a pair of wild rock boots in case there is a chance for an AC/DC concert. Or the nurse, whose fine, high-heeled shoes contain references to the health sandal with its strong soft leather, straps, and coarse buckles but in this particular shoe are

combined with an ultra-high plateau sole. Or the long, classic, black boots and red stilettos you are expected to own when over the age of 45 but never wear because they feel so wrong.

Picking out a pair of shoes involves a number of parameters: Early preferences from your youth, body perception, what you wish to hide or accentuate, the sound of the shoe, the job you have or want, life situation, political values and attitudes, the way you want to be perceived, and not least what you do not yet have but still dream about. Right here the ball is thrown back to the shoe designer as the co-creator of future dreams in the life of the user.

Like only few other objects, the shoe helps define who you are and dream of being in the world. And it speaks its dream language with a stringent and precise grammar.

tord andreas bjornson eikensanne keil sørensenpetja zorecmaria-louise vagner sørensen

Many people create a facade, hiding what is really on the inside. We have connected this with the

Picture of Dorian Gray; Oscar Wilde’s story about a man’s desire to keep his youthful beauty forever. A magical portrait is painted of him aging instead

of his body. He abuses his eternal youthful beauty with treacherous acts, and the damage it does to

his soul is reflected in the portrait. The painting is a symbol of his true identity.

Our inspiration comes from a story where a woman’s shoes function as her diary. She keeps her collection in suitcases and every pair reminds her of different experiences from her past. This is in contrast to today’s trend of using online virtual networking to share our experiences and life publicly. We decide ourselves how much we want to share and whom we want to share it with.

Today, we change many things about ourselves with plastic surgery, clothing, make-up, and hair dyes. We decide what we want to show of ourselves but also what we want to keep secret.

Our shoe concept is based on whether it is possible to keep a secret about ourselves. We are exploring what we want to show of the foot, how we can show it, and how much we can show. In the collection we have worked on how we can deform the shape of the foot. We have worked exclusively with straight lines, angles and perspectives. Whether you are looking down at your feet while wearing the shoes or someone else is looking at them from another perspective, the foot will constantly look different. Throughout the collection the wearer sees almost all of the bare foot from above, whereas the side views and other angles make the foot look deformed, and different openings and exposures reveal some of our secrets.

lars majlund mørkrikke frausiganne mette fosgrau

Green footprints around the city. The shoes sow seeds where you walk.

Life grows around your feet.

ragnhild mjønnerramona reilethea engberg lassen

This shoe collection is designed on the basis of the daily routines of a serial killer from morning until midnight; an increase in drama, a play with extremes and schizophrenia, a journey through the mentality of the serial killer reflected in material changes and hidden details.

7 shoes 7 times; the changes during the day. Everything starts with the vulnerable bare feet in the morning in a pair of plain sandals moving on to the moments of stress and displacement at noon and depression and seclusion in the afternoon. Early evening is calm before the killer wakes. Plans are made for hunting at night.

Material, colour, shape, and surface reflect these moments and the resulting diversity of feelings. The closer to midnight, the more the killer’s life is dominated by schizophrenia. The design is more extreme, the inside of the shoe is richer in detail, the contrast between inside and outside increasingly bigger, the back part and the heel more and more dominant. The shoe is preparing with the killer for the murder. The shoe itself becomes the weapon, and the killer sets off on the hunt and kills in the moment of absolute dysfunctionality. Shoe and body are connected to a sharp line that hits the ground.

08:00/ alone. naked. vulnerable.Sandal with blank grey leather, orange leather strings, glossy black sole and a metal heel.

12:00/ work. hectic. displacement.Loafer in a warm grey with metal buckle and three-dimensional pattern on the medial and back part.

16:00/ suppression. tired.Boot with folded black leather shaft, grey metal ring and special metal needle opening on the inside.

18:00/ instinct. waiting.Grey leather ankle boot with black leather wall and metal detail on the heel.

20:00/ plan. preparation.Deep black ladies pump with closed outside surface with metal detail and caved heel and metal detail inside.

22:00/ focusing. breathing. hunting.Ladies high-heel with latex sock, black leather vamp and an extravagant metal blade heel that is orange on the inside.

00:00 / kill.Ladies high-heel ankle boot with dark grey refined leather and a black wall outside. Inside with a caved heel covered with metal, textile finished felt, and a special metal needle opening.

Each individual shoe design reflects the obsessive mentality of a serial killer:

Aesthetics combined with fascinating details, extravagant leather finishing and

materials of the finest quality.

sebastian nause-blümlvibe lindhardt fælledtesnim sayar

A collection of lightweight shoes based on the dynamic lightweight constructions of nature. The shoes are surrounded by the delicate veins of a leaf telling the story of the low weight and the thrifty but efficient material consumption of the shoe.

turning a story into a shoe by carefully listening to other peoples’ lifetimes with shoes. Bringing those experiences into the creative process is the core of the Shoe Stories project.

This book shows how students from Kolding School of Design have developed storytelling concepts from user interviews and turned them into spectacular shoe designs. The students have worked in cross-disciplinary groups, bringing in skills from industrial design, textile and fashion to create shoes which tell their story by means of shape, surface, texture, colour and materials - all the tools of expression that can be found in the shoe designer’s toolbox.

The project is part of the strategic collaboration between Kolding School of Design and ECCO. Collaborating with ECCO and using shoes as the case for design projects is ideal to Kolding School of Design because designing shoes involves a wide range of design competencies: Shoes represent a complex task in terms of form which requires significant competencies in shaping three-dimensional objects; shoes are fashion objects that disseminate and decode contemporary society; and finally shoes represent a universe of diverse materials, surfaces, and details that create comfort and express the function and aesthetics of the particular shoe.

shoe stories

ecco shoe stories

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