Old Skins for New Boots
Non-binary boots made from old lederhosen (image: Roman Häbler and Matteo Visentin).
It’s the tongue that gives the game away. Flipped up and out from the vamp, its leather is a little worn, a little patinated. Particularly around the tips of its atypical frilling, the soft camel has brûléed and stiffened. That this leather has had prior usage seems obvious. “It’s actually a part of the sides of a pair of lederhosen,” explains the shoe’s designer Matthias Winkler. “It’s a detail that gave more flexibility to the knee.”
The Jaga shoe’s upper is made entirely from antique lederhosen leather, and bears all the marks, scuffs and patina this suggests. It’s the kind of material that recurs across Winkler’s debut ‘Dystopian Hunter’ collection of non-binary footwear. Working from his Berlin studio, Winkler has crafted shoe uppers from vintage working gloves and antique buffalo-leather trousers, as well as deadstock cow, calf and deer hide. The soles of each shoe, meanwhile, are variously produced from repurposed bicycle tires, deadstock leather or rubber, and layers of natural felt and cork. The ensemble is held together with hand stitching and traditional wooden nails. “I cannot make you 100 shoes,” he explains. “The materials I’m finding and researching are, by nature, limited.”
Winkler’s palette is salvage – scraps plucked from the factory floor or picked up from flea markets. “I found factories which still have fantastic materials that nobody uses anymore, while the rest is basically things that people throw away,” he explains. “People don’t wear lederhosen that much anymore.” Part of the design enterprise, then, is restoring the voice of waste materials that would otherwise remain silent – a process that brings challenges. “You’re working with materials that may be broken in some way,” says Winkler. “Pattern-cutting is difficult [given imperfections in the material] and there’s the additional challenge of needing to have the same material for both shoes. At some points, I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ve picked a way to make everything that is difficult [about shoe-making] more difficult.’”
In addition to this act of material reclamation, Winkler’s practice is further shaped by its commitment to revitalising craft techniques: the shoes are all produced in Berlin by master shoemakers Andreas Neuschwander and Stefan Kilian, working with traditional machinery and tools. “When I met them, they were largely doing repair work on shoes, like renewing heels,” says Winkler. “They were really good shoemakers, but they didn’t work in their craft anymore. These are people who weren’t doing what they’re good at anymore.”
Winkler’s brand, then, has a neat symmetry – pair dormant skills with dormant materials and let the two revitalise one another. “We’re living in a world where there’s too much of everything and I didn’t want to contribute to that,” he says. “The only justification for me to make my own brand was to use these dormant resources that are already there and would otherwise go to waste. It’s a simple concept really.”
Words Oli Stratford
This article was originally published in Disegno #26. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.