Agathe is a French footwear designer based in Paris who recently finished her studies at Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) specializing in footwear. Prior to that, she studied womenswear at ESMOD Paris. For her graduate collection at IFM, she explored the topic of anonymity in modern society.
Tell me about your graduate collection.
I started thinking about [my graduate collection] during the first COVID lockdown. There is an idea that has always been scary to me: with the rise of social media and the internet, it feels like “anonymity” doesn’t exist anymore. So I really wanted to make a collection of shoes that would create a sense of hiding, as if being “anonymous” again. You might not think that shoes can define your identity but in a way I believe they can. That’s why the whole idea of my collection was really to “hide from surveillance”. I made shoes that look like pants, or the continuation of your clothes, or shoes that don’t exactly look like shoes. You can sort of see the outline, but it’s not obvious that there are shoes when you look at them. That “anonymity” was really the whole idea for this collection.
What is your design approach, or how do you normally get inspiration?
It has been evolving for the past year. In the past, I was really thinking more about aesthetics, and I was inspired a lot from my personal life. Then I realized: something very personal might not make others feel the way that it makes me feel. So I tried to move a bit away from that and put the focus on the meaning or messaging first.
For example, I made a sustainability project last year. It was a partnership between my school and Adidas and I decided to make a sneaker collection based on natural disasters for the partnership project. It is said that by 2030 or 2045, natural disasters will increase due to climate change. I did some research on that and added sustainable materials to the project to showcase how scary natural disasters can be if we don’t save our planet. I was very pleased with the results and it also made the project even more powerful. Considering I had never designed sneakers before, it was challenging but I loved it. Since then, I have changed my design approach to really focus on the meaning and I have found aesthetics follow, usually.
Do you think social media or the internet defines who we are or leads us to become the people we are right now?
I think it’s a subconscious choice. Most of us are very influenced by what we see and hear. So if the information that you receive has been chosen for you, it will influence you even if you don’t want it to. That’s why social media influencers are called influencers because you are influenced even if you don’t want to see them on your feed. It’s also a super scary thing that people get all your information from your data. I view the internet as a wonderful tool, but there’s also something malevolent about it.
You did womenswear before and now footwear. For you, is the design process similar or different?
Very different. The design process of womenswear to me involves a lot of fabric, texture and prints. Oftentimes you see a fabric and you can tell what would look good with it. For footwear, the design process is so different because
shoes are items and you don’t need to wear them for them to look nice. They look great even if you just leave them on the shelf. Clothes, on the contrary, need a person to wear them to be meaningful. So to me I’ve always envisioned footwear design as product design.
When you design footwear, do you get inspired by womenswear? Or do you take any ideas from womenswear?
It’s really funny that you ask this because I did take inspiration from womenswear for my graduate collection. I have a few shoes that are made of fabric and I also bought some jeans for their finishing. For the pantsuit shoes in my graduate collection, I draped the pants onto the shoes to make it look like the pants really “fell” on the shoes. Since it was my last collection during my studies, I thought it would be nice to reconnect with what I started with, which was womenswear.
You said your work is feminine. How do you define modern femininity?
That’s a really difficult question because femininity and masculinity nowadays become very blurry. I won’t say they don’t exist anymore because I think they do. But I think we’re changing our definition of a “woman” and a “man”. At first, when I started my studies, high heels and ruffles meant femininity - a very basic womenswear idea. Now I’m not sure about that anymore. My work itself is said to be very delicate but I would also love men to wear my shoes. So I’m actually wondering if my work is really feminine. To me, modern femininity now is just to accept who you are.
I say this because people identify with two different genders nowadays. They feel differently, like, you can be anything now. Which I think is great. I want to make shoes for people - woman or man, I don’t care; men can wear my shoes even if they were designed for a woman. I would actually love that.
Tell me “Something New”.
I discovered what it is like to be frustrated. I think a lot of people can relate to frustration. When you go from a fashion school where you’re used to doing everything from beginning to end (from concept, research, designs, making everything, you’re a little team on your own), while your internship has very specific tasks. Your tasks depend on the size of the company that you work for; if it’s a big company you will be given a specific job with specific things to do. You don’t get to do all the things that you were prepared to do as a student. That’s frustrating.
Another new thing is that I’ve been listening to podcasts. There’s this designer called Guillaume Henry who used to work for Carven and now he’s the designer of Patou. I love him - yeah, um, if you see this you can hire me! He says that you need frustration to move forward to create new things and it’s really an important part of your work. I agree with that.