San Francisco-based Allbirds has blazed the trail for planet-friendlier footwear since its launch in 2016, creating shoes out of wool, sugarcane, tree fibres and castor bean oil. With its new running shoe, the ‘Dasher’, it looks poised to disrupt a $50bn performance footwear industry that, despite valiant efforts, remains closely entwined with petroleum-derived synthetics.
‘We’ve been told many times by people more experienced than us that for a product to be performance-based, it needed to be synthetic,’ says the brand’s co-founder Tim Brown. ‘The idea of challenging that is part of the inspiration for this whole project.’
This story is from the Summer 2020 edition of Wallpaper.
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This story is from the Summer 2020 edition of Wallpaper.
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Pas de Deux - Choreographer Wayne McGregor on turning a post-apocalyptic trilogy by Margaret Atwood into a three-act ballet in collaboration with composer Max Richter
Wayne McGregor is the master of creative collaborations. As resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet, a position he has held since 2006, he has translated an eclectic roster of literary, avant-garde and contemporary references into works for the stage, as well as taken the helm on film, TV, fashion and music videos projects, and founded his own London-based studio.
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After a 20-year hiatus, design returns to the Dakar Biennale this year and, for curator Ousmane Mbaye, it comes at a pivotal time. ‘My curatorial practice is based on three aspects,’ he says. ‘A desire to do a design inventory in Africa; to record the materials being used; and to present the current generation of designers in Africa and its diaspora, and see their visions realised.’
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Guest Editor Marcio Kogan - Marcio Kogan has been prolific since setting up his namesake studio in São Paulo in 1978 (it was renamed Studio MK27 at the turn of the century).
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DREAM TEAM
A rewatching of a seminal film laid the foundation for JW Anderson's latest collection, a fantastical collaboration with artist Christiane Kubrick
