Heart and soles: the rising stars of shoemaking

PAUL ANDREW
Creator of sculptural stilettos

It’s not often that a small, independent footwear label goes globally viral, but that’s what happened when Meghan Markle wore a pair of suede Paul Andrew pumps to the Queen’s funeral, last year. Markle curtsied, displaying the soles of the shoes — which were stamped with the designer’s initials — to cameras. On social media, fashion conspiracy theorists went into overdrive.

Certain elements of the press also went “wild”, says British-born Andrew, who lives between New York and Paris but is on the phone from his weekend home in Connecticut. “Like, ‘What is this hidden symbol? What’s she trying to say?’ Oh, it’s just my signature!” Andrew’s name was everywhere. “A friend in Turkey was like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re on the front cover of the newspaper!’”

It was auspicious timing. Andrew had recently relaunched his eponymous brand after putting it on pause for three years, to work at Ferragamo, where he was creative director until 2021. His own brand, launched in 2012, had won plaudits (he was the first shoe designer to win the CFDA/Vogue Fashion fund, in 2014) and celebrity fans (Markle is a long-term client; Lena Dunham and Jessica Chastain are repeat wearers). It was stocked in more than 100 global locations but, admits Andrew, when it grew, it became a bit “uptown — slightly more ‘uptight lady’” than he would have liked. “It wasn’t necessarily where I felt my heart was.”

The relaunch is very different. He says he is intentionally keeping distribution tight — the brand is stocked at Neiman Marcus and Saks and has an imminent capsule with MatchesFashion. “It’s much more forward and younger, elegant, much more directional,” he says of the new aesthetic, which has won over Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson. After feeling “sort of trapped”, creatively, by so many years working within the classical codes of Ferragamo, new signatures include pleasingly undulating heels he describes as “very curvaceous and sculptural”, inspired by his favourite artists, including Brancusi, Jean Arp, Anish Kapoor and Marc Newson.

Other quirky motifs, which he says, “I’m hoping to make iconic elements,” are his A-shaped buckles, and embellishments he is calling “ice cubes”, fashioned from coloured Plexiglas. Key styles include Levitate — a curvy, chunky platform with his signature curvilinear heel — and Slinky, a three strap barely-there stiletto, which is, he says, unusually anchored to the foot, because every strap is adjustable. The most outré of all are his “fluffy” styles, which are thickly padded with fuchsia or pale pink dyed shearling, the heels hand-studded with multicoloured Swarovski rhinestones like sprinkles on ice cream. “That’s more my party girl side. I guess I got carried away in certain aspects,” he says, laughing.

Andrew, 44, who grew up in Windsor, had wanted to be an architect as a child. Later, he met an actual architect and found out that, despite years of work, she had never seen one of her buildings come to life. “That really depressed me, so much,” he says. So he explored another early interest, which was fashion.

Creating a shoe is like designing a building in some ways. “It has to hold weight. When you’re creating a stiletto heel, you’ve got all this balance to consider.” It is also sculptural: he says he makes “thousands” of sketches for each new shoe, then brings his favourites to the factory to carve the prototype out of wood. He also hand cuts all of the pattern prototypes. “You are kind of a mini sculptor; you have this thought about, say, a Jean Arp sculpture, and have to think about how you can make it into a wearable object.” Moulds are then made. Many of the heels are galvanised “in an Italian sports car factory”.

Comfort is a big consideration. Even his slimmest heels are wider at the bottom than a traditional stiletto, while the insoles have extra cushioning. It is important to him that his clients can walk freely, that his brand espouses modern ideals, generally: his campaigns and social media feature a diverse cast of models. As for the brand’s environmental impact, he points out that he uses recycled plastic for all heel units and certified-sustainable leather for all soles. There is still a long way to go, he says, “but I’m absolutely committed to it”.

That he is self-funding the venture is a big contrast with Ferragamo, he says, where “you’ve got a million euros to do a fashion show and the same to do an ad campaign. The budget is . . . quite significantly less!” What he has instead is freedom, and he’s revelling in it. Hannah Marriott

OLIVIA PUDELKO
Name behind Western Affair uses found materials

In 2019, an investor offered Olivia Pudelko £20,000 for 20 per cent of her shoe brand, Western Affair. Founded in London in 2017, as a one-woman operation, the company was relatively new, but Pudelko’s eccentric heels, made from upcycled scraps of fur and leather, thrifted tablecloths, vintage carpets and second-hand silk ties, had already caught the eye of established retailers such as Opening Ceremony and Farfetch.

The sum was small — but tempting. Pudelko needed to pay off student debts and was struggling to keep up with orders. Speaking on Zoom from Poland, where she is now based half of the time, Pudelko says she declined the offer because it was conditional on moving production to a “sweatshop” while retaining a “Designed in London” label. “I was like, there is no way I can do it, it’s not going to make me happy.” She turned the investor down and continued to work alone from her apartment, until she found a small factory, in Poland, that could work on her terms.

Born in Poland, Pudelko, 28, moved to the UK after primary school and later studied mixed media fine arts at the University of Westminster, where she dabbled in painting, sculpture, casting, woodwork, metalwork, video and photography. Fascinated by what people were wearing in London, she soon started to incorporate fashion into her work. For her graduate show in 2017, Pudelko dressed up five people in what she describes as “artistic clothing” — a vintage blanket soaked in plaster and moulded on to a model’s body; a cast of a cowboy hat plastered in latex, weighing more than 5kg. Her graduation pieces and a number of other one-off creations, including shoes, were featured in fashion magazines, which in turn brought in orders from retailers. Soon Pudelko was making dozens of pairs of shoes per week.

Many of her first pairs were made by reworking, by hand, beaded bridal shoes from the early 2000s. “It would take me a couple of hours just to take the beads off the shoes before I could do anything with them,” she says.

Since she started working with the Polish factory in 2020, things have become easier. Pudelko can now count on a team of about 20 to manufacture her shoes. The designer has also refocused on direct to consumer, pausing wholesale orders to build her own ecommerce site, which last year brought in sales of about £53,000. She expects to make double that this year.

Her sales have been boosted by her popular Cowgirl mules, which debuted in the summer of 2021 and anticipated the cowboy boot trend of 2022. Western Affair’s mules take a cue from the classic American footwear but add a touch of glamour and 2000s nostalgia. They feature a 9cm heel, an open back and embellishments such as crystal beads, metal spikes and faux fur trims. Most styles are priced between £200 and £290.

Despite the advantage of working with a factory, production quantities for Western Affair are still limited. Aside from heels, soles and insoles, Pudelko mostly uses second-hand and found materials for her creations, which means that she can usually make about 10 pairs in the same colourways before running out of material. The designer mostly buys leftover leather in online auctions, but sometimes people contact her to dispose of materials or clothing they don’t need, such as the Croatian woman who recently sent her a bunch of vintage fur coats. When we spoke in February, Pudelko was working on a collection of 20 one-off pairs made using squares of fabrics from old swatch books she found for sale in a London tapestry shop.

Working with found materials is an opportunity for Pudelko to unleash her creative impulse. “I have so many ideas all at once and an urge to constantly make,” she says. “It’s so easy and convenient to do plain leather shoes, but I see my shoes as sculptures.” Annachiara Biondi

SUNNI DIXON
Self-taught US designer with a reputation for experimentation

It’s 1pm on a Friday and Sunni Dixon is just getting up and about after an evening of robust partying. The 32-year-old Washington DC native could write it off as beta testing: after all, his designs were created for clubbing.

A regular on the grunge, rock and techno scenes, Dixon reached a point where he felt the designer footwear market was out of step with what he was looking for. “I was taking apart shoes and adding on platforms. That’s where it started, having my own ideas and wanting to push my own look,” he says.

Despite intending to outfit a customer base of exactly one, Dixon’s designs were the kind that inspired people to stop him in the street. He quickly began taking orders from friends and fellow night owls, and caught the attention of Beyoncé’s stylist for the singer’s “Party” music video, in 2011, for which he shod a few models. In 2018, for her Made In America appearance, Nicki Minaj wore a pair of Versace boots from that year’s autumn/winter collection, customised by Dixon a matter of hours before she hit the stage.

Soon, magazine editors and artists such as Lil Nas X were buying his boots from fashion shoot sets. In 2022, his brand, Sunni Sunni, won a place in the second annual The New Wave, the Saks Fifth Avenue new designer accelerator programme, designed to develop emerging, independent brands by nurturing their growth with support from industry insiders and the CFDA.

Dixon first moved to New York at the age of 18, intending to study fashion merchandising. Unable to secure a place at fashion design institutions such as FIT and Parsons, he decided to teach himself footwear design using books and YouTube tutorials. Alongside a career as a product developer for clothing brands including Ralph Lauren, the designer shadowed a cobbler to hone his craft, creating footwear in his free time.

In their first iterations, his designs were crafted from leather offcuts and existing footwear in a kind of bricolage. Today, Dixon uses deadstock, vintage shoe components and upcycled materials as well as sustainable fibres such as Ecco leather, to which he applies cutting-edge 3D design and print skills, fusing technology with creative innovation.

“I’m really big on reusing and repurposing. If I do use anything that’s not real leather or organic material, I’ll do my best to pull it from somewhere that was already using it, such as overstock,” the designer says. “With upcycling and recycling, you have to be very creative because you’re working with a lack of resources. If I don’t have enough of [a material], we’re just going to make it look like it’s torn. [It’s about] taking the seriousness out of it and just enjoying a shoe as an art piece.”

The Sunni Sunni aesthetic is indeed experimental and innovative. Sneaker samples can take up to two months to return from manufacturing because of the complexity of Dixon’s designs and the scarcity of materials. Take the shape of the soles of the celebrity-favourite Reese boots, a particular feat of engineering. The designer created a tool to ensure the slanted block soles were cut at an angle to bolster a strong, angular silhouette without the bulk.

“I don’t like normal things, and if it is normal, it needs to be polished in such a way that a silhouette stands out. That’s why my Reese boots are very, very sleek,” he says. “Simple details . . . but there’s also craziness and a lot of things going on, [it’s] stimulating on all fronts. I like shapes, I like fun, I’m not so much bent on formalities or how things should be. I’m definitely in the exploration mindset of it all.” Divya Bala

ALFREDO PIFERI
London-based designer of leather-free glamorous footwear

“Ain’t no boots for Sunday Mass”, is the caption that accompanies a recent Piferi Instagram post, featuring its knee-high, corset-lace-inspired, Love Me Knot boot.

It’s doubtful whether many, if any, of Piferi’s shoes would pass the churchgoing test, but then the sensible shoe is not what customers of the vivacious Italian, Alfredo Piferi, 35, come for. Instead, they seek high-octane glamour from a designer who made his first official footwear collection for the house of va-va-Versace in 2010. He moved there after interning in men’s ready-to-wear for Valentino, having given up on his first love, architecture. Shoes, he found, were the perfect way to combine his obsession with the structural, the functional and the fashionable. And in Donatella Versace, he had just the right boss. “Donatella’s one of the few designers who loves shoes,” Piferi says. “A lot of ready-to-wear people try to almost hide the shoes because all the focus needs to be on the clothes, but Donatella often actually starts from the shoes.”

After Versace, he moved to London, in 2012, and worked at Jimmy Choo, then Burberry, where he was head of design until 2019. He founded Piferi in 2020, from his flat in Soho. The shoes are made in Italy, but what’s really different about Piferi’s luxury footwear is that it is leather-free.

“I wanted to offer something more,” says Piferi. “Of course, Stella McCartney has been doing vegan shoes for a long time, much more daywear, a very different product. I wanted to do this perfect, beautiful, luxurious, feminine product on a par with Louboutin or Jimmy Choo, but without using leather.” The Piferi signature, although not used on every shoe, is the curved Dali heel, from a sketch inspired by the Anish Kapoor 2002 installation at Tate Modern. “I replicated the heel many times for different brands over the years but it never made production,” he says. So, when it came to his own brand, he had a ready-to-go shoe.

Piferi removed animal products from his diet almost a decade ago. “When it [meat] was not available to me any more, it became this creative thing to find the alternatives.” As with food, so with fashion. Piferi has had to think outside the box and encourage his manufacturing partners to do the same. “You can imagine, when I went to Italy, to the factories, and said I want to make leather-free shoes, they looked at me like I was an alien,” he says, exploding into laughter. “They were like, ‘No, we cannot help you!’ But a couple said, ‘If you are crazy enough to try this, we are crazy enough to follow you.’ And now, we have a product that is leather-free and refined.”

Materials used for the shoe uppers include bio-vegan “nappa”, made of 48 per cent bio-polyols — natural plant-based oils derived from, in this case, corn oil — and vegan “suede”, made using recycled PET including post-consumer waste, such as plastic bottles. Insoles are made from 100 per cent cellulose, a natural polymer found in the walls of plant cells, and heels from the recycled plastic compound ABS.

The brand is growing in popularity on the red carpet. Lizzo wore Piferi’s Fade sandal to the Brits in February; Anitta recently performed live in its Mirage boot. Piferi tries all the shoes himself. “When I launch a new structure, I walk in them and really try to understand the experience of a cut. There’s a direct relationship with me and the product,” he says. But he also has a panel of trusty female road testers, which includes a fashion stylist, a banker and a wealthy woman who doesn’t work. “If they all give me good feedback, I know I have a commercial product.”

Although he still has to fight against preconceived ideas of vegan shoes being cheap or badly made, Piferi says his concept is becoming more readily accepted all the time. “More people are becoming vegan. In 20 years’ time, most brands will be using substitute leather, I believe, and I’m going to be at the forefront of that,” he says, cheerfully. Kate Finnigan

ANCUTA SARCA
Made her name repurposing vintage trainers

Ancuta Sarca, 31, developed a strong personal aesthetic and an interest in fashion in her early teenage years, but growing up in a working-class family in Romania, she found that designer clothes were out of her reach. She found an alternative in buying second-hand garments that she deconstructed and personalised according to her taste. Vintage shoes in particular became “an obsession” and by the time Sarca launched her eponymous footwear brand, in 2019, she had a sprawling collection to experiment with.

“It just came very organically to me to make something out of them,” she says over Zoom from her London studio.

The designer’s debut collection at London Fashion Week, in September 2019, included futuristic slingbacks and mules in neon colours made from reworked second-hand Nike trainers, aptly presented on a carpet of fake green grass that resembled a mini football pitch. These hybrid trainer-pumps, which have become the designer’s signature style, came with dainty kitten heels as well as traditional sportswear touches such as padded tongues, thick sporty laces and Nike swooshes. Since then, Sarca has expanded her categories to include boots, sandals, loafers and mules, made from deadstock leather, deconstructed second-hand garments and end-of-roll fabrics.

Sarca’s designs are eccentric but also familiar, with recognisable references — 1970s square toes and buckles, 1990s pointy toes, 2000s kitten heels — that come from her long-lasting interest in vintage footwear. “I’m a big fan of vintage, but I always think about how I can innovate it and make it for a modern woman,” says the designer. “When I use vintage shoes or vintage garments, I try to save the handmade finishings, those things that no one does any more.” Modern women including Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa, Rihanna and Cher have all given their stamp of approval.

Playing with contrasts such as old and new is central to Sarca’s design practice. “It’s this idea of pushing the boundaries,” she explains. “In my mind, trainers are associated with masculine style and sportswear, so it’s about putting them in a completely different context — luxury, elegance, feminine.”

Sarca trained in womenswear design at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and worked as a clothing designer in London for almost four years before founding her footwear business. She credits her background in clothing design with giving her an innovative perspective on footwear. “My main roles were always really hands-on, coming up with new shape ideas. I took the same processes that I used for clothes, such as draping and collaging, and I used them for shoes. I think that it’s what made the brand fresh,” she says.

According to Sarca, her clients value the uniqueness of her pieces, which are often made in small, exclusive batches, as well as what she calls the “eco-conscious” aspect of her design practice. “I have a big market in Asia, cool kids in Japan and China, but also European middle-class customers who want to own something new and contemporary that they see as an investment,” she says.

Sarca combs through websites such as eBay, Vinted and Depop and markets in Romania and London to source used trainers, while her deadstock leather mainly comes from Italy, where the shoes are assembled. She produces about 700 pairs per season, which are sold wholesale through high-end boutiques and ecommerce stores such as Browns, Farfetch, Ssense and LN-CC.

Once again inspired by a contrast, for her latest autumn/winter 2023 collection, Sarca looked at artificial intelligence, data and the digital world on one side, and nature on the other. “I was in Romania for a bit longer this winter and my hometown is surrounded by woods and mountains, so I was really connecting with nature,” she says. “I was thinking of how we depend on both these very contrasting worlds and that’s how we live now. Even if you live in nature, you are still really connected virtually.” These reflections were translated into heels, boots and loafers that combine cosy materials such as end-of-roll fake fur and padded nylon jackets with high-tech mirror chrome elements. “It’s always that juxtaposition of hardcore elements made soft, masculine and feminine,” says Sarca. Annachiara Biondi 

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