Hasta La Ideas

The soles and uppers of these shoes separate easily so you can repair them yourself.

Created by Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Eugenia Morpurgo, the canvas footwear is assembled with reversible, mechanical fastenings rather then the usual stitches or glue and comes with a repair kit.

The Repair It Yourself project might be handy if the cobblers in your area have already gone out of business but it’s bad probably news for those who haven’t.

See all our stories about shoes here.

Here are some more details from Eugenia Morpurgo:

I’m an italian designer just graduated at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Social Design master program.

I’m sending you my graduation project: Repair It Yourself, a concept of shoes designed to be repaired.

The activity of repairing is a form of re-appropriating control on our material world, allowing us to understand how things function and acting as a key tool for the consumer to control his post-consumption goods (waste).

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 shoes come with a repair kit specifically designed for them, but which can also be used to repair other goods in the house.

Repair It Yourself was shown in the masters graduation galleries at the design academy Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2011.”