Patchwork History

Alongside the development of our resole service in 2016 we developed a technique to save even more shoes from landfill. By deconstructing used sneakers and piecing them together we were able to create a new skin. In the past years we deconstructed thousands of shoes to make our signature patchworks. 

 

This is the first shoe we made from our patchwork, we found beauty in the randomly placed pattern pieces and unifying multiple competing brands. This unity symbolizes our goal to create harmony and peace among all.

 

In 2018 we were invited to work with Timberland, and their craftsmen in the Dominican Republic. Together with Helen Kirkum, Suzanne Oude Hengel, Daniel Bailey, David Mawdsley and Nathan Alexander Walker we were invited to reinvent the iconic yellow boot. In 5 days we created more than 20 new designs, many of which where brought into production.

Below you can see us working with the cut off material. We pieced it together and created a new boot, with the off cuts. 

After working with used sneakers for several years we managed to create a relationship with Vive, Europes largest sorting center of used textile. First we tried to stay more local, and collect our shoes through Dutch sorting centers, however they were not able to source the type of shoes we needed. Vive agreed to 'create' a new type of product for us and train their staff to find exactly what we were looking for.

Below is our first delivery of shoes in 2019. We could have this amount of shoes delivered weekly if we needed that much. Just to illustrate how many shoes are discarded daily. 

In 2019 we were commissioned by Selfridges, London to create a large patchwork, to celebrate the launch of their goal to become more sustainable and the launch of our shoes in store. For this proces we were challenged to create our largest piece to date. At the time we had 6 interns who all made small 'puzzle pieces' and after we stiched the puzzles together. 

 Our Circulair Patchwork at Selfridges.

Together with one of our design interns, Asuka Kondo, we were able to create a way to resole shoes with a strip of patchwork material. During this time we started working with an external production partner in Hungary.

Dutch artist S10 commissioned us to create a partchwork butterfly from iconic Nike Air Force 1's, for her album cover.

Because we were able to work with thousands of deconstructed shoes we were confronted with the never ending amount of discarded shoes. That makes it possible to curate any colour combination that we desired. Here we were walking with black, white, yellow and blue. The pattern blocks inspired us to create other shapes than shoes, such as the circle below.

Last year we were invited by the Dutch shoe museum, Schoenen Kwartier to work in their footwear lab. Here we took a leap back in time, and revisited our past design language by making high heeled shoes. 

For the acompaning exhibition we were asked to create a large patchwork, at the time we actually did not have enough time to make a large piece, however we said that we would try. We felt some pressure to preform and not to disapoint. That lead us to develop a totally new matrix to place certain pieces in a certain location. By using this matrix the maker could work much more efficient and the result would always be succesful. (We actually tried to outsource the patchwork making a few years earlier, with our Hungarian  production partner, thinking it would not be compicated only to discover that it was very compicated to explain what looks good and what doesn't.) It was a breakthrough in our production process to discover a foolproof way to make a our patchwork.

To celebrate our 10 year anniversary, in 2023, we created a large patchwork from boxes in the hallway leading to the exhibition space. At the time we didn't realise it, but it making this large patchwork fulfilled a longstanding urge to make a large work.

See a selection of patchwork shoes we have made here.