Shoe is one of the most important pieces of our clothing and yet many of us know little about it. This lack of awareness has brought pain to our feet, to people in sweatshops and so to global craftsmen. How many of our shoes are truly comfortable? How many makes our feet look beautiful? How short they last? How expensive the better ones are? Who makes these cheap and uncomfortable shoes? Where are the real shoe makers?
I designed Embrace to answer these questions. Embrace, embraces our feet by bringing affordable comfort and a customized appealing look. Embrace is an easy self-assembled shoe kit, designed to serve not only as shoes but a shoe educator to familiarize us and our children about structure and material of all shoes.Embrace is featured on RISD graduate studio delights.
They come in 4 pieces: the outsole, insole, upper pieces and laces. The wearer, who here is also the creator, has control over assembling the shoe in different ways.
Embrace is 100% environment friendly. For instance Embrace’s outsole is made from bicycle tire rubber. Tire rubber absorbs the heel shock and provides sufficient flexibility for a more comfortable walk. Embrace, prolonge the life of tire rubber.
Embrace’s look and comfort is customizable.
Easy self assembly of the shoes brings the user closer to the production line. It positions the user between traditional handcrafted shoes and mechanized shoe production.
Embrace's packaging is simple, takes up the least space with no waste.
Ten pairs of sandals were studied prior to designing Embrace to evaluate their comfort and discomfort reasons. The narrow strips of summer shoes in market leave painful marks. They are not appropriate for long walks. The more comfortable ones lookes bulky.
First Prototypes were made using masking tape, plastic, and card board and pieces of scrap leather. The agenda was to use a wider and adjustable strips. Toes play an important role in the look. It’s not only about the shoes, it is also about how they form and show the feet.
Even the right and left foot are different in each person, let alone the feet of different people. It’s only the user who knows their feet well unless the shoe maker sees their feet and exchanges ideas; there is no way that generic shoes come out perfectly.
Embrace were inspired by Giveh. Giveh is a handmade Iranian shoe that has served feet for at least 2000 years and sold in thousands of businesses. Many families, have made their living through the production of Giveh. Even kids have been a part of the maintenance cycle of shoes.
Giveh is disappearing from the Iranian shoe market because of the imported mass-produced shoes.
As a kid I would fall asleep with my mom and dad telling the sweet stories from thier childhood: my mom knitting small patches with other kids for their father and grandfather's Giveh and the excitement of buying snacks with the money given to them in return or my father starting his first job learning how to make shoes and growing to become not a skilled shoe maker but a shoe seller.
I started the shoe project because I had no story to tell my future kids about their shoes. I own 10 pairs of shoes with no single story. I have 10 pairs and none bring enough comfort.
We hold industrialization and mass production responsible for our disconnection from objects. Technology has served to scale this distance by speeding up the production process. In this project I used new technologies such as laser cutting to bring people closer to what they wear every day.
