
Jimmy Choo partners with Fashion Makes Change
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For Spring 2021, Jimmy Choo collaborates with leading Parisian designer Marine Serre - whose body-conscious and environmentally-attuned clothes have fast made her a pivotal figure in the contemporary fashion scene. Inspired by Serre’s commitment to ergonomic and kinetic clothing, influenced by athletes and designed to move with the rhythms of modern life, the streamlined silhouettes of the collaboration highlight the shared ethos of both brands: comfort and respect for the body, without compromising style.
The silhouette of the FARO - an elongated pointed toe, a lower heel with a sportif attitude and freedom of movement - defines the offering. The collection comprises a wardrobe of classics: a 100mm heel pump; a Mary Jane, ankle-boot, sock ankle-boot and sock calf-boot, all with 50mm heel; and the knee-high KATO flat boot.
The colour palette is sharp: black, white, tan and red. All styles feature Marine Serre’s leitmotif crescent logo: some an evolution, a bi-colour ‘half-moon’ shape executed on recycled jersey, alongside calf printed with Serre’s all-over Moon. Drawing from the world of high-performance sports, stretch jersey is used for the sock-boots at ankle and calf, and all styles combined their jersey and calf with rubber details in contrasting textures and hues. Inherently feminine, the styles are also dynamic, engineered for movement: walking, running, cycling, designs that are sensual hybrids between sportswear, streetwear and high fashion. The KATO boot, referential to the soft-soled, flexible fabric boots worn for boxing and martial arts, is the most obvious crossover, but all styles borrow from the universe of sports. They add to a reflection of the way we dress - and live - today.
MARINE SERRE IS AN EXCITING TALENT - HER INNOVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION GRABBED MY ATTENTION. HER DESIGNS ARE BOLD, CONFIDENT AND INHERENTLY FEMININE - WHICH IS PERFECTLY ATTUNED TO OUR LANGUAGE AT JIMMY CHOO - SANDRA CHOI, CREATIVE DIRECTOR
SANDRA AND I HAD AN IMMEDIATE CONNECTION DURING THE CREATIVE PROCESS; SHE FULLY UNDERSTOOD MY PERSPECTIVE AND IT WAS EXCITING TO SEE HOW WE COULD MERGE THE TWO BRAND’S IDENTITIES INTO A HYBRID PRODUCT – MARINE SERRE
Connected with that is the idea of sports. It's something that has inspired your clothes a great deal, Marine - you cycle every day, and you played tennis for years. What are the sports references you look at? How does sports influence your designs?
Marine Serre: When you are used to something as a child, even if you don't do it as much as before, it stays part of you. I started sports at four years old: it’s now part of how I move somehow, part of how my body is constructed.
Sandra, sport is something that you are constantly thinking about with Jimmy Choo: even with high heels, you have referenced the idea of a ‘trainer attitude’. What is the influence of sport in your design process?
Sandra Choi:You can't ignore sports - every other person is in some kind of sports gear. And I'll say personally, I'm much more lifestyle sports driven than the actual performance sports. I mean, my first love was really a Converse trainer, which is the most iconic, simple trainer, because it's just a very simple basketball shoe.
What kind of sports influences can we see in this collection? How does it manifest?
MS: It’s obviously emphasised with the Kung-Fu shoes, the MOON BOXING KATO SNEAKER - dressing a Kung-Fu team in the film I produced with Sacha Barbin and Ryan Doubiago to showcase the collection. That shoe was really designed for the wearers, because they are Kung-Fu masters. It was important to give a functionality to the shoe, to make sure that it was going with a full look but that it would work. The most important moment for me there was when the Kung-Fu artists tried the look, and I asked them, “Okay, do you feel good? Do you feel right? And do you feel like you are really going to be able to perform?”
SC: So, your question to the wearers, when you were kind of setting everybody’s look was, are you comfortable? Can you feel your shoes? And I hope the answer was no, that they were very happy with their shoes - they couldn’t feel them, they became part of them.
Marine, you’ve spoken about your own jimmy choo shoes - which are from 2000. Did you draw inspiration from specific styles from the jimmy choo archives for this collection?
MS: We couldn’t go to the archive because of COVID-19. But we worked with images and we evolved styles: we added jersey, we used new cuts and vintage cuts. The MOON LOZANGE SOCK ANKLE BOOT, came from a vintage style.