шкарпетка 2012
My collection is a strange mixture of fantasy and the attempts to copy the classics of shoe design. I have always had a strong desire… longed to make shoes which would not resemble anything… but my desire has always faced the wall of misunderstanding by clients and manufacturers. I was exhausted from having to look for a contractor who would be able to produce a high-quality implementation of all my fantasies concerning shoes. At one moment I understood that it was the end… a dead end.
However, as the Oriental wisdom says: ‘the beginning is only the sign of the end, and the end is merely a pause before the beginning’. And, when I was tired of my own despair… I found a book about the life and career of Salvatore Ferragamo… I remembered that the Maitre was in a situation similar to mine, when Mussolini imposed embargo on Italy because of the support of the Nazi… and how Ferragamo bailed out of the difficulties and became the first to use synthetic materials and cork in shoes… This inspired me. So, I took the tendency of ecodesign on board and began the study of various materials and the possibilities of their reuse in the designs of shoes… but this did not mean the loss of fashion trend.
However, this turned out to be no easy task, and to make my fantasy real, I had to create a ‘fashion trend’ of my own… that is to write a fairy tale. And it was this fairy tale that shaped my purpose… From that moment on, I wasn’t making simple shoes anymore, but shoes made by supernatural beings… brownies… spirit-guards, who, according to the Slavic mythology, protect our homes and can both help and harm the host of the house. However, my brownies were the spirits who served shoemakers, and thus, because of the strict end-use and hygienic requirements, I used materials which practically cannot be found in trash.
So, the result was a rather strange mixture of classical shoemaking materials and things not connected with shoes at all… things which can no longer be used as they initially were supposed to, things which can easily be lost, or simple rubbish.
© Roman Sobetskyy
