Stahl, the leather chemical company, is introducing new synthetic materials due to the rising cost of leather. My partner, Miller, and I teamed up to design shoes from Stahl's new materials. After spending several weeks in China, we were inspired by two different things. The first form of inspiration came from the blue industrial trucks hauling random payloads ranging from construction equipment for factory barrels. They were absolutely everywhere. The second form of inspiration came from the realization that our new shoes were quickly getting extremely dirty walking around on the streets of China. Because of this, when we were selecting materials, we purposefully found water and stain resistant synthetics consisting of a black shinny print in addition to a black and blue matte material. Together we designed a sneaker and a boot that could withstand the wear and tear of the streets while showing our industrial inspiration in a fashionable way. 

 

We gathered fashion images to explain our story, sketch out concepts and render our final designs. At the material market we ordered outsoles and purchased additional construction materials, laces and eyelets. We then worked directly with a footwear factory based in Houjie, China to create our shoe samples. First we sat with a pattern engineer to draft our last. Then we cut our materials, skived the edges, glued and sewed our uppers alongside the factory team. The final samples from all of the SLEM students were showcased at Stahl's Lineapelle booth in Italy.