Patrick Robinson to Design Shoe for Allen Edmonds, Launch New Business Dedicated to Craftspeople
Patrick Robinson has a new passion.
The designer, who has worked for a variety of brands over the course of his career, including Giorgio Armani, Anne Klein, Gap and Perry Ellis, is now devoting his time to creating jobs on Native American reservations and for other underserved communities across the U.S.
More from WWD
Robinson is launching AwareMade, a project that will establish workshops to manufacture items from responsibly sourced materials and provide training and other services to improve the quality of life of the craftspeople in these communities.
Robinson will not be designing clothes for AwareMade, but instead will work to connect the artisans with companies where their crafts can be sold. “I’m going to be training people to be the best craftspeople in the world,” he said.
But Robinson is not giving up on designing completely. He is partnering with Allen Edmonds to create the Patrick Robinson x Allen Edmonds shoe as part of the company’s Legend Series. Robinson is the latest designer in the series that has also featured Raleigh Denim Workshop, Barbour and Armando Cabral.
The partners chosen for the Allen Edmonds Legend Series are selected because they share the brand’s passion for craft. Each collaborator applies their artistic touch and aesthetic to create a new generation of classic shoe styles in the Allen Edmonds’ factory in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
Robinson said the shoe company, which is 102 years old and part of the Caleres portfolio of brands, reached out to him because it had heard about his passion for American craftsmanship. When he saw how the company has manufactured handcrafted shoes in the U.S. for more than a century, he was all in.
Robinson, who desgned footwear for the other companies he has worked work in the past, created The Humble Curiosity Slip-On, featuring Allen Edmonds’ Goodyear welt construction in a lace-free, easy-on-and-off design made with a soft leather or suede upper for comfort and a Vibram V-Lite outsole for lightness and durability.
Robinson said his goal was to create a shoe that was both comfortable and fashionable. “I travel constantly and wanted a shoe I could wear anywhere,” he said, adding: “I’ve been on a mission to make people more comfortable.”
That includes his most recent fashion endeavor, Paskho, a direct-to-consumer brand of high-tech travel clothes for men and women he launched in 2018. Robinson said that he stopped producing the brand at the beginning of the year to focus all his energy on AwareMade. “Pashko is a very different business, but it opened this door for me,” he said.
He said over the past few years, he has discovered that roughly 60 to 70 percent of Native Americans on reservations do something creative. So he will work with them — starting with the Sioux on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota — to turn these skills into commercially successful businesses. “We hope to share it with more people and more companies like Allen Edmonds,” he said, adding, “That’s what drew me to Allen Edmonds, the fact that they manufacture in America. So many companies make things the cheapest way they can, but they make one of the best shoes in the world.”
“We are honored to have the opportunity to collaborate with such a well-respected figure within the fashion industry that, like us, believes in timelessness and quality,” said David Law, senior vice president and general manager for Allen Edmonds. “Patrick’s reverence for artisanal craftsmanship is an inspiration. We are thrilled to see creative possibility through his lens.”
“Allen Edmonds and I share the purpose of wanting people to experience American artisanship that has gravity,” Robinson said. “Authenticity and craftsmanship matter; it means being more deliberate and intentional about product.”
The Patrick Robinson x Allen Edmonds collection will be available in Allen Edmonds’ retail stores and online beginning Sept. 1 and will retail for $495.
Best of WWD
