These wooden shoes by London-based footwear designer Cat Potter clamp around the wearer's feet and fasten with a metal hinge.
The Pernilla shoes are moulded in the shape of feet on the inside while taking an abstract and blocky form on the outside.
Potter used computer technology to produce the shoes using 3-axis CNC milling machines. Three different types of wood have been used – walnut, sapele and pear.
The collection was inspired by the wooden sculptures of Australian artist Ricky Swallow.
Potter presented the shoes as her final MA collection at Cordwainer's, the footwear and accessories school within the London College of Fashion.
We previously featured a collection of hand-carved wooden shoes made for sports brand K-Swiss.
See all our stories about shoes »
Photographs are by Alejandro Cavallo.
Here's some more information from the designer:
Pernilla. Appropriating industrial design and manufacturing processes to bespoke shoemaking.
Cat Potter’s MA final collection of bespoke footwear, Pernilla, steps out of the traditional footwear context, blurring the lines between footwear and artefact.
Grounded in a unique interpretation of architecture and the wooden sculptures of Australian artist Ricky Swallow, the collection is based on complex CadCam work and a labour intensive fabrication process using 3-axis milling machines.
The result being a series of sophisticated and elegant sculptural forms made from different types of wood (Walnut, Sapele and Pear) that trace the silhouette form of the foot on the inside, diffusing its profile on the outside.
The collection has won the Jimmy Choo MA Final Collection Award for Excellence 2012 from the Cordwainer’s Guild and was runner up for the MA Design Award for Best Collection in 2012 from the London College of Fashion.
Oh, please.
Would the designer like to wear those shoes?
The collection was also inspired by ten Bhömer it seems: http://marloestenbhomer.squarespace.com/storage/w…
I would have thought Torquemada instead :P
It’s fit for the designer to wear and pose. THAT is all.
Another shoe post with no feet in them.
Let me see a picture with somebody wearing that.
They’re not too sexy, are they?
I’d like to wear them. They are beautiful and exciting. Too good to hide in a cupboard or box. I’d love to wear them and be seen in them. Unusual shoe but what is so wrong with ‘unusual’?
I’d wear them too – if they were comfortable. Fabulous but ultimately torturous.
It’s the idea of carving a foot form into anything really. I love the project. It is not about selling them as wearable, it’s about exploring. Still, since it IS the shoe, it should have been photographed on a model’s feet. Just so we see how they stand.. and a video, of the walk.
Where can I buy them? Never says how much they cost.