Do You Want Your Feet Back? Barefoot Cobblers Do You Want Your Feet Back? Barefoot Cobblers Table of Contents 2 3 Foreword – 04 The Ju|’hoansi 108 Future Footprint – 09 of Nyae Nyae, Namibia: – 123 Christine De Baan A Historical and Anthropological Feet and How 26 Perspective to Shoe Them – 51 Robert K. Hitchcock Catherine Willems The Atelier 132 – 141 How Humans Walk and 70 Flora Blommaert Why Footwear Matters – 79 Kristiaan D’Août Postscript 142 – 145 Interviews with 84 Ju|’hoan Cobblers – 105 3 Foot, photographed during fieldwork as part of a biomechanical analysis, Nhoma, Namibia, 2018. © Thomas Nolf Foreword – Future Footprint Christine De Baan 4 5 100% personalized 3D-printed footwear based on features of indigenous Indian footwear. Ghent, Belgium, 2018. © Thomas Nolf What makes Catherine Willems’ work¹ the switch, these villages become more techno­ on “Future Footwear” so appealing is its logically advanced in their energy sourcing than promise to leapfrog more than 150 years their counterparts in the West, circumventing of industrialization, with all its attendant the need for coal, oil, or nuclear energy. afflictions—environmental destruction, From pre­industrial to post­industrial depletion of natural resources, extreme with the smallest possible footprint: these global inequality—and bring us straight are great leaps, and necessary ones. We are into a cleaner and fairer future, while taking currently using up our planet at the irrespon­ cues from ancient knowledge and craft. sible rate of 1.7 times its capacity, and the pace is increasing. Every year, Earth Over­ 1 Catherine Willems (KASK / School of Arts, Ghent, shoot Day—when we have taken more from Belgium) founded Future Footwear Foundation to scale-up concepts that she developed for her doc- nature than our planet can renew in the entire toral research at KASK to global activities and sus- year—falls on an earlier date. This year it tain the convergence beyond term-limited research. was August 1, meaning that we are living on borrowed time for the last five months There are other examples of such leapfrogging, of 2018.² though not rooted in craft. Most famous is the arrival in recent decades of satellite dishes in 2 The “we” here should be qualified, however: coun- tries like Qatar and Luxembourg already reached remote rural villages across the Global South, this date in February, whereas some African and many of which had been unreached by physical Asian countries will not reach it at all this year telephone lines, sparking new economies, net­ (www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-over- works, and knowledge building—particularly shoot-days). after the advent of what has become a most efficient tiny computer, the smartphone. Or It is also becoming clear that “green growth” the rise of high voltage direct­current systems is not enough: growth itself has become connected to solar panels, bringing clean, un sustainable. “Degrowth” is the only cheap, and renewable energy to previously way for ward. We need to radically rethink non­electrified communities. With a flick of the way we live, produce, and consume. 5 100% personalized 3D-printed footwear based on features of indigenous Indian footwear. Ghent, Belgium, 2018. © Thomas Nolf Seen from the perspective of the earth’s The rise of fast fashion is very recent. existence (4.5 billion years), the presence of Only in the last two decades have people in its current destroyer, Homo sapiens, is but the affluent world gone from having fairly a mere flash in time (200,000 years). Even limited wardrobes, with some variation for within this limited timeframe of our existence winter and summer, to the current almost daily as a species, the industrial era is just a blip. glut of buying cheap, hardly­to­be­worn, soon­ From the tentative perspective of some further to­be­discarded items of clothing. Fashion has millennia of human existence, we should be quickly become the second largest polluting able to step back and see around it, into industry in the world, using up precious re­ a more sensible future. To my mind, that is sources and spreading toxic waste, creating what Willems does when she looks closely an appalling record in income equality, and at well­honed, traditional ways of making employing people in dismal working conditions. footwear, perfectly adapted to the natural The fashion industry is realizing much too environment and perfectly suited to the slowly that it urgently needs to change. It will wearer’s feet, with the aim of recreating these not “degrow” by itself—there is too much qualities in a contemporary, future­oriented money at stake. Legislation on an international way, using materials and techniques with level is needed to decrease the environmental the lightest possible footprint and realizing pressure of the industry and raise the living the highest form of made­to­measure. Her standards of fashion workers. Meanwhile, work reminds us that not so long ago all of consumer awareness is growing and people us wore handmade clothes and shoes, using are looking for alternatives. the materials that came to hand, re­using what As the recent exhibition State of we already had, adapting, fitting—naturally Fashion 2018 | searching for the new luxury 3 bespoke. And we kept and used these few showed, some of the larger companies essentials for a long time. Just the other day, are now researching and developing my father proudly pointed out that his newly cleaner alternatives—halving the amount polished, handsome­looking black shoes were of water needed to produce a pair of jeans, more than forty years old. for example—and have started monitoring 6 7 Cobblers checking the quality of newly arrived eland antelope skins, Jaq’na, Namibia, 2018. © Thomas Nolf and ameliorating working conditions in The Future Footwear Foundation clothes factories. (FFF) can play an important part in this. The research by Willems and her team, 3 Arnhem, the Netherlands, 1 June – 22 July 2018, also presented in State of Fashion, is unique curated by Jose Teunissen (stateoffashion.org/en.) in bringing three disparate fields together: traditional footwear in three very different H&M (Sweden), the original fast fashion indigenous cultures, the biomechanics of culprit and still in no ways perfect, is currently the human foot, and advanced technology making some of the largest strides, while for 3D measuring and printing. What G­star RAW (Holland) recently produced makes this so interesting is the depth and their first “Cradle­to­Cradle Gold Level seriousness of the exploration in each field, certified denim,” while publicly sharing the resulting in a richness of data and infor­ process and technology involved. Designers mation which has only just started to yield such as Stella McCartney (UK), Oskar its first outcomes. Metsavaht (Osklen, Brazil), Amaka Osakwe This intense dedication to research (Maki Oh, Nigeria), and Mia Morikawa and and attention to detail might be a typically Shani Himanshu (11.11/eleven eleven, India), feminine trait. I am reminded of the deep are trailblazers in creating and advocating long­term research into color by Dutch for fairer, cleaner fashion. And increasingly designer Hella Jongerius which, though it research is being done at universities and finds its applied use in the furniture (Vitra) fashion schools into alternative sources, and aviation industries (KLM), springs from materials (algae, fungi, fruit waste), pro­ her personal fascination with all aspects duction methods, and distribution systems and properties of color, and her committed (self­assembly, personalized adjustment, quest to changing our understanding of it leasing, and borrowing). This research, and its use in our daily environment. Even coupled with the vision of designers and without industry partners, her research artists, is essential to understanding and would continue: first it exists, then comes imagining the way forward. the demand. 7 |Aice cutting backstraps, Jaq’na, Namibia, 2018. © Thomas Nolf Japanese architect Toshiko Mori bases We learn from FFF how these traditional each project on a principle she learned from types of footwear actually represent a “new Iroquois Native Americans: “They said that luxury”: hand­made, bespoke, eco­friendly, with every single decision you make, you equitable. And how this essentialist approach should think of seven generations ahead.” can be translated into a contemporary context, She designed the Thread Cultural Centre in using the latest 3D­scanning technology and Sinthian, Senegal, as one undulating roof that 3D printing to create the perfect made­to­ gives shade, collects rainwater, and shelters measure shoe with minimal material loss. the community and their activities. Pairing This resonates with a renewed interest in advanced parametric design with traditional Stewart Brand’s magazine Whole Earth Catalog, bamboo frameworks and adobe walls, it was founded in 1968: it was the California bible built by the local community. for a minimalist, autarchic, ecologically sound The footwear­making skills in the lifestyle combining the tools and products of three communities Willems investigated nomadic culture with new technology, with were built up and shared over generations. usefulness and easy accessibility as key re­ This is a common, free­flowing form of quirements for inclusion. knowledge, not fixed, as the evolution of the Our feet are our primary means for Sami snow boot clearly shows, nor exclusive standing on and moving about this earth. to a traditional lifestyle, as the daily use of They anchor and propel us forward.4 kolhapuri sandals in India proves. However, it is at present not always a highly respected 4 Kristiaan D’Août further explores this idea in his text skill: many Indian cobblers, for example, in this book. don’t have a sense of the importance of their work. But this form of knowledge deserves Through modernization and industrialization, wider recognition: if we are serious about most of us have lost our immediate connection degrowth—and we urgently need to be— with our planet.