Heritage Meets Future in Dr. Martens’ Workwear-Inspired 14XX Incubator
Dr. Martens, the United Kingdom-based boot and shoe company, announced three new collections Thursday, all under its new 14XX incubator, which will allow the footwear maker to pursue a new direction that riffs on its traditional footwear silhouettes.
The collections, called the 14XX Beta Pack, the Protection Pack and the Sub Boot Pack, draw inspiration from the company’s roots, according to Andy Brown, Dr. Martens’ global head of energy marketing.
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“Drawing from a deep archive of functional workwear, the design team have elevated, disrupted, and evolved our classic silhouettes. The past really is disrupting the future,” he said.
Dr. Martens showed previews of the collections at an event in Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn on Thursday. The Beta Pack will launch in December, while the Protection Pack arrives in June of 2024 and the Sub Boot Pack, which is designed to be fully waterproof, will roll out in October of 2024.
Each collection features a few different silhouettes — from Chelsea boots, to club wedges and, of course, classic tie-up combat boots. The pieces that fall under the 14XX incubator umbrella each have 14 dots somewhere on the shoe — whether on the tongue, the back of the shoe or otherwise — to signify their affiliation with the incubator.
The name of the incubator comes from the brand’s marquis boot — the 1460 — paired with the freedom to explore what’s next, Brown said.
“The ‘14’ references the beginning of the brand, and the ‘XX’ is for the future. That’s why we call it 14XX,” he said.
Brown said one of the goals of the collections in the incubator was to exaggerate form while highlighting function.
“One of the design principles we have is durability — that’s a really big thing. … When Dr. Martens is playing in that space of workwear, we looked at what we did [in the past], and we’ve tried to exaggerate it now for a whole new [product]. What I’m really excited about is bringing workwear into the fashion space,” Brown told Sourcing Journal.
Consumers have already begun embracing workwear as streetwear with other legacy brands, like Carhartt.
For Brown, creating a boot inspired by Dr. Martens’ roots and design principles seen in icons like the Jadon boot is an exciting development — especially because it didn’t require collaboration with another brand.
“We’ve always stressed our design language with collaborative collaboration partners, so this is an opportunity for us to do it as a brand, on our own,” he said. “The way we’re doing it — by distorting the past, distorting icons, distorting our DNA, for me, is so exciting. … I think the potential of it is kind of … boundary-less.”
Brown said the brand will debut the collections with select retailers — what he called the “slam jams of this world” — to better understand how its consumers will respond. He could not yet comment on which retailers those would be.
As Dr. Martens looks toward the future, it will continue to create styles that fall outside of the incubator. But it will also use the incubator to accelerate the development of new, disruptive styles, Brown said.
“This will be a continuous experimentation that we feel will drive the entire brand forward into an undefined future inspired by over 60 years of heritage,” Brown said.
