Jan Jansen’s Shoe

Jan Jansen’s Shoe, a book about the famous, award-winning bamboo platform sandal, will come out on 26 June, in honour of Jansen’s 50 years as a shoe designer. Jan Jansen’s Shoe is the fifth volume in the Premsela Design Stories series on icons from Dutch design history.


Jan Jansen is the Netherlands’ best-known shoe designer. Born in 1941, he’s been causing a stir with his provocative, baroque and experimental footwear for half a century. He made his international breakthrough in 1973 with the iconic bamboo shoe, treasured by fashion and art lovers alike. In this book, Lisa Goudsmit examines the sandal as a fashion and art object and describes how it became an icon – and achieved a similar status for its designer.

The bamboo shoe
Jan Jansen’s Shoe describes how the bamboo sandal’s design came about and how it was produced in different phases and in various styles and materials, as well as examining other pieces from Jansen’s extensive oeuvre. Goudsmit also looks at Prada’s 2005 copy, which Jansen sarcastically called ‘an affectionate adoption’, and its possible influence on the shoe’s image and that of its designer. The book also describes Jansen’s influence on contemporary shoe designers.

About the author

Lisa Goudsmit is a design historian and journalist with a special interest in the places where fashion, design and art intersect. For this book, she has interviewed numerous professionals influenced by Jansen’s work, including the furniture designer Jan des Bouvrie, Hans Kemmink of the fashion duo Puck & Hans, Karin Bloemen, Rem Koolhaas of United Nude and the jewellery designer Hans Appenzeller.

About Premsela Design Stories

Jan Jansen’s Shoe is the fifth volume in the Premsela Design Stories series, in which Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion, and NAi010 Publishers tell tales from Dutch design history. Each book centres on an iconic object that is characteristic of a particular period and has played an important role in design’s evolution.

Publisher: NAi010 Publishers with The New Institute
Author Lisa Goudsmit (journalist and concept developer in the field of design),
design by Lex Reitsma.
Dutch/English, paperback, 160 pp, ISBN 978 94 6208 048, cover price €19.95
Available at NAi Booksellers

More shoes by Jan Jansen at the Virtual Shoe Museum.