Soles With Soul: Donna Karan and Kenneth Cole Are Collaborating With Artisans in Haiti on Summer Sandals
DK KC gallery
Donna Karan and Kenneth Cole: two iconic names in the New York fashion industry; a combined 70 years of experience between them; never collaborated! Until today, that is. (Let’s chalk it up to collaborations being a 2010s thing.)
Like most great ideas, this one started with a personal story: Three years ago, Karan purchased a pair of leather sandals with a plush rubber sole from Cole’s Gentle Souls line (which fuses performance technology with natural materials), and they instantly became her summer signature. “Everyone was constantly asking where I got my sandals,” she says. “They are seriously the most comfortable shoes in the entire world—they are beyond comfortable. I can’t even explain it!” That got her thinking about the leather sandals she was producing in Haiti through her label, Urban Zen, which sparked another thought: What if she could get these crazy-comfy, foamy soles into the hands of the artisans and create something totally new and modern?
She called up Cole, who has also been working in Haiti for nearly a decade, to discuss a potential partnership. (Another point of similarity between the two designers: Both immediately went to Haiti after its devastating 2010 hurricane and have aided health care, education, and cultural preservation initiatives ever since.) Cole and his team had been working with a group of artisans making shoes out of local materials, “but they were a little stiff and uncomfortable,” he admits. So Karan connected his team with Pascale Théard, a longtime Urban Zen partner and highly skilled local workshop owner. In January, Cole and Karan flew down to her shop in Port-au-Prince and finalized 10 designs, all of which merge Cole’s comfy soles with traditional Haitian leather-working.
The finished products are equal parts Cole and Karan: gladiator sandals with cushioned soles, fringed and embroidered leather uppers, and braided straps that wrap around the ankle. “You know when you try on a shoe and go, Oh, my gosh! It’s that kind of feeling when you put these on,” Karan says. “I always say, if you can’t sleep in it and go out in it, I don’t want it. [I want] things that go from day to night, with an artisanal hand, with a story, with a meaning, with a soul. I always say it’s never about me—it’s about we and who we work with.”
Following a low-key launch party in the Hamptons over the weekend, the shoes are arriving in Cole’s store on the Bowery, at Urban Zen in New York City’s West Village, and on both designers’ websites today, with prices starting at $325. “Hopefully it becomes an ongoing sustainable business,” Cole says. “If nothing else, it shines a light on a culture that deserves to be celebrated. We’re making these in very limited quantities to start. We want them to be a vehicle for telling the story of this community.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
