Alien Native Shoe design by Ellis Droog

Ellis Droog, an amazing Dutch shoe designer, contacted me during the final year of her Master in Shoe Design.
On this page you can find a brief explanation of her design practice. For the full version and much more visit www.EllisDroog.com

Every time and place has a story. Its inhabitants translate their values, possibilities and convictions into the things they do, make, think and practice.
With this they create their world. Products, services and rituals gave shape to worlds throughout history and foreign places and they still do today.

Anthropologists use these things to interpret what the values of a certain people at a certain time and place are or were. As designers Ellis believes they have the ability to do the opposite. ‘We can take values, possibilities, convictions and interest and translate them into tangible experiences. These things we create, and the way we go about creating them, in turn shapes our world. For me this is the power of design.’

Looking at our current fashion industry and taking a step back to look at what these processes and products say about us, what values they embody, She for one feels disconnected. ‘Considering that what we make and how we go about making something is a mirror of our values I am sure this is not the story I want to tell.’

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Due to the crisis that hit all over the western world in the last decade people start to prefer authentic, local products made by small-scale companies. This however is the opposite of what the fashion industry thrives on, the shoe industry in particularly. The process of how a shoe is made is complex and therefore they have to be mass-produced to be profitable. This production process is so standardized that it has been the same for decades, noting about the construction has changed, the only thing that is designed is the surface. Not only do I as a designer feel limited by this but as a result shoes all over the world look similar. So these products and this system, if not now then in the near future, do not fit our values any more.

But there is a changes going on in the manufacturing and material branch that could hold a solution. Rapid prototyping techniques are transforming into rapid manufacturing techniques. Braking down the walls of who had the privileges to manufacture what an enabling people to locally manufacture their own products on a small scale.

Because of this I decided to use local, new, innovative and old established craft combined to design the construction and functional parts of the shoe, which are normally hidden, like the shank, heal- and nose reinforcements.

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The Designs in this collection are very special in all there manufacturing techniques.
They not only include CNC milling by me @ RoboCNC, but the is much more that meets the eye.

3D printed metal shank – Thermoformed EVA front sole – Plastic reinforced leather nose – Lasercut back sole
3D milled wooden heel by RoboCNC – Poured rubber sole – Screw connections.

3D printed metal heel/shank – Steam formed wooden heal reinforcement – Lasercut EVA front sole –
CNC routed Acrylic back sole by RoboCNC – Poured rubber sole – screw connections.