Roderick Pieters X Proef

I present to you the most easy to assemble pair of shoes you have ever come across by Japanese designer Roderick Pieters. The Loper Shoe launched through Kickstarter in collaboration with designer brand Proef last month and its sole purpose for design was to eradicate the production process by allowing the end user to assemble the shoe themselves without the use of any glue and with the help of their step by step video guide. The product as you can imagine has all the inner workings of Japanese design, simplistic yet full of character. The soles can come in a variety of colour and each shoe is made up from a plastic sole and leather insoles and uppers with the option to repair them if needs be. The design work is exceptional, the thought process has been extremely thorough to bring you a new way of thinking about footwear, construction and ultimately production.

Sandra Plantos

Thinking outside of the box is where I'm going with todays post. You are probably on this blog because you have a love for shoes, and as you can probably agree when it comes to shoes, even though they can vary in style massively, ultimately they're all designed essentially with the same components. The obsession comes in when a shoe is designed with a new way of thinking, Sophia Webster reigned last year with a new aesthetic, hailing from cordwainers like most of the high end designers we admire. Sandra Plantos another footwear designer completing her masters at London College of Fashion, has designed a completely original collection, using her Architecture degree as inspiration, but I can assure you, they won't be anything like your imagining. Plantos has put a heavier emphasis on the construction of the shoe, whereby the use of concrete rebar (reinforcing steel) and plywood are the only materials used in this collection reflecting her architecture degree. For me they're conceptual pieces of art work since the construction inhibits movement, but this all underpins what Plantos had originally set out to do; create a new concept of footwear, to aid slowing down the pace of our daily routines. If this collection is any thing to go by we will be in for a treat with future collections.