ECCO // Shoes
Hello!
I’m here for the last time this year, to tell you about our latest project: Ecco / shoes.
Ecco is a big, danish company who makes shoes. The job was to make shoes for Ecco, not for who they are now - but for who we imagine they could be.
Our guest teacher was D’wayne Edwards, who started Pensole footwear design academy in Portland, and who has been working in the shoe industry most of his life. A talented man with a great knowledge about the industry, but a man with a very different work process than the one we normally use. Frustrating at first, but looking back, i’m probably not going to regret having learned something new about process and sketching, right?
Ecco sponsored our course, as they have done for the past few years. That means giving us new leather workshop, sending their employee Ella to Kolding to help us actually make shoes, and sponsoring leather. That is so awesome, and I know that this kind of collaboration is rare, so it’s a great opportunity to learn something new - how to make shoes, how to make soles, how to work with leather.
We were in groups of three - one from each of the product departments: fashion, textile and industrial design. Unfortunately the industrial designers were outnumbered, and Mathilde (textile) and I ended up in a group with no industrial designer. So we had to get down to their workshop, and start learning from scratch! A little stressful, but also fun.
Mathilde and I made shoes for tweens - a boy and a girl, age 12. The theme is sci-fi and technology, and we have been working with two labs, as they do in Ecco: concept lab and innovation lab.
In concept lab, the purpose was to create a shoe that could move the identity of Ecco, and be sold in 1-2 years.
In innovation lab, we wanted to make a shoe that pushed the limit of how to wear shoes, and ended up making a shoe that you just slip your foot into, and spray on the upper to make it fit and stay in place. The spray is a mix of fiber and a liquid, that turns into a non-woven material when sprayed on any material. And though it’s not commercial yet, it does exist.
This has been a good but seriously stressfull project, and I’m right now sitting in the airport on my way to Thailand, and I can’t wait to relax for once!
Happy holidays and merry X-mas!
- Christina.