The ability to repairs one’s own footwear is a concept that sustainability designers have been toying with for some time. Now, Eugenia Morpurgo, a design grad from Eindhoven, has created sneaker-like shoes that are easily repairable because the soles and uppers can be taken apart without dealing with adhesive glue.
The shoes are simple canvas shoes (think Tom’s shoes) but the soles are reversible which allows the wearer to get twice the bang for the buck.
When you buy the shoes, they also come with a Repair It Yourself kit. As Morpurgo explains on TreeHugger, Shoes are one of those products that, with the rise of consumerism and mass production, evolved drastically from a completely repairable object; and the active social-economical structure that existed around shoe repair is slowly disappearing. Shoes, both crafted and industrially manufactured, are almost always assembled through irreversible connections, stitching and/or gluing. This means that components such as the sole and the upper, although commonly made of two very different materials, are inseparable. Throughout use, shoes are worn and damaged both in the sole and in the upper.
These shoes are designed with a reversible connection between the sole and the upper, allowing the repair process to be more transparent in relation to the material the individual component is made of. This project brings back in the hand of the consumers tools and knowledge for repairing.
The concept clearly works for tennis-like canvas shoes now, and could be considered for skate or running sneakers in the future as part of brand’s sustainable or more eco-friendly line within their collection.
While giving consumers twice the amount of time to wear out their footwear may be counter-intuitive for brands trying to increase profits for shareholders, the opposite effect could outweigh what appears as negative sales traction. Just as Patagonia’s ad in the New York Times saying “Don’t Buy This Jacket” over the holidays sparked a debate about consumerism and the need to think about one’s purchases, but drawing credibility to the eco-friendly brand, the Morpurgo RIY footwear may do the same and actually increase sales within one’s collection by offering another DIY solution among a new generation interested in decreasing their carbon footprint (no pun intended).
