Wood & Paper Shoes by Orma Shoemaker x Zouganista

A pretty cool project recently went underway between a bespoke shoemaker and a wooden inlayer in the heart of Florence, Italy.

For a presentation at the latest Pitti Uomo, they created three samples of shoes, one being a normal, leather brogue, another being made the same but in special cuts of wood (the middle, brown one) and one is in white paper (looks like paper mache).

The shoemaker is called Orma Shoemaker (Wataru Shimamoto), trained under the famous Il Micio. More to come on him later.

The wooden inlayer goes by Zouganista on Instagram. His name is Takafumi Mochizuki.

The project is pretty darn cool and takes shoe art to another level. I cannot imagine how careful they had to be in order to make the two special shoes. That paper has to be so incredibly delicate and if one knows anything about lasting leather, you will understand just how difficult that had to be without breaking. The question is how many attempts were made?

But my favorite is the wood one. That extremely beautiful natural design of the wood is one of the most interesting things I have ever seen on a piece of leather. Museum Calf on steroids. That would be pretty cool if a tannery could mimic that although I think that it would be quite a hard thing to do.

I love to see projects like this. To see how creative people can be and test the boundaries to shoemaking. Well done to these two for doing something unique. I hope that they gained something good for it!