Rupert Sanderson | Slow Learner

Ambling through cobbled streets and sleepy backyards in West London’s posh Mayfair, it is difficult to imagine that the headquarters of one of Britain’s hippest new accessories designers are just around the corner. Cue to non-London-Cognoscenti: The “next big things” of Britain’s metropolis normally prefer the Eastend with its high density of bars, vintage shops and scenster kids, or try their luck as squatters with a punk attitude in South London’s urban wastelands.

Rupert Sanderson, the shoe designer with a weakness for clean shapes and the highest possible quality, is not only a geographic contrast to London’s ultrayoung new design generation. The 41-year-old had a late calling and only went into shoe design at the relatively ripe age of 32. A decision that—although hyped as either divine intervention or a moment of madness in his biography—was long overdue according to Sanderson: “I was getting more and more disillusioned with my job and kept on thinking about what I would really want to do. And there was a curiosity about how shoes were made.” He did some research and found London’s Cordwainers College, the only college specializing in shoes. “I phoned them up, they said the course starts in two months, I resigned from my job, everyone thought I was mad, and I went to college.”

He was different and never tried to hide it: „I do not really fit into the world of fashion, I didn’t go to art school, I went to University and did boring things. I learnt to make shoes, amplifying my outsiderness. I am a straight man with a family, that’s fairly unusual in itself in the fashion industry.” He prefers movie premieres to fashion shows, especially if the shoes he designed are an integral part of the film: „I am looking forward to ‘The Other Man’, which comes out this year. It’s a film by Sir Richard Eyre, with Antonio Banderas, Liam Neeson, and Laura Linney. It’s about a shoe designer, so the shoes get top billing.” But he is sceptical towards focussing on selling a certain image, which for some labels has become more important than the product: “If you make the image a central plan of your DNA, you’re effectively trying to build into your shoes something that is ephemeral and very difficult to control.” He obviously doesn’t mind if Claudia Schiffer buys a pair of his shoes, but he doesn’t necessarily wants to be a mega brand. His shoes are for women who—in a room full of red (Louboutin-) soles—want to wear more exclusive designs.

Sanderson clearly doesn’t design to be able to enjoy the glamour and limelight of the world of fashion or because he has developed a childlike fascination with backstage-gossip, champagne or frontrow-celebs, but because he just wants to make shoes. The technical details have never been a problem for him, not even at college, and unlike designers who only draw sketches, he stresses not without pride that he was particularly good at the actual making of shoes. He thinks that his little detour into advertising was responsible for this and the resulting conviction that designing shoes is the only right job for him: “In England you get people graduating when they’re 20 and they are out in the world of work before their 21st birthday. Having done all the things they’re meant to have done for their education. I was a product of this system. I worked for 9 years and then I decided it wasn’t right.“

If you leave a good career in order to totally dedicate your life to shoes, you wouldn’t go for second best. Who wants dodgy cheap pieces as the essence of their lives? That’s why he produces in Italy: “I will fly to Italy again tomorrow. If I’d get the plane to China, my shoes would be half the price, but I’d come back not feeling as content and happy with myself. In Italy I can see my factory on a little hill… I fell in love with the country. The shoes might cost more, but the ‘Made in Italy’ package you get is worth it.” When asked about what makes an Italian produced shoe so special he starts to rave: “You pick up a shoe and it feels true, there’s a weight to it, a substance. It’s like good food—and you can always find cheap food—but the pleasure is in going somewhere where something is made with pride, a sort of historic understanding as part of the culture.”

Sanderson talks about historically grown small factories that are still the backbone of the Italian industry, about people who specialize in nothing but buckles, know absolutely everything about them and could talk about them all night. About families who produce parts of shoes in their garage or live directly above their small factory and feel a personal responsibility for every single one of their products. “That way a shoe has character, elements of the shoe are wrapped up with the character of the people who make them.” Mediterranean romanticism aside, Sanderson, who worked for Sergio Rossi and Bruno Magli before the family run businesses were bought up by bigger companies, finds well crafted products essential. The love of shoes, the fact, that he sees them as something with value, goes back to his early memories of shoes, especially the shining military boots of his father: “My father was in the army, the different boots are mythologized there, they have to be so clean they shine. Shoes had a great significance for people growing up in the 40s and 50s in general, when you bought a pair of shoes and looked after it, because you couldn’t afford a second one. Today they are disposable, but back then there was a real sense of value, and cleaning your shoes was a ritual.”
But he does not believe in a general shift away from characterless mass products: „The cheap stuff will get better, the good stuff will be more rarefied. But people will want to invest in the human element. A product that’s made anonymously and performs a function is fine, people need that in their lives as well, but there should be highlights too.” Sanderson specializes in the highlights, in puristic shoes and clean forms: “I have a passion for lines and forms, I don’t overaccessorise. The shoe has to compliment the woman, not the other way round.” As a real modernist he adheres to the principle of “form follows function.” For autumn/winter 08 his—still minimal—silhouettes are more extreme than usual. His latest shoes with their ultra-high heels and plateaus that will raise the average height of his fans to at least 185 cm, are a departure for him, but at the same time this season’s bestsellers. “The market is becoming more extreme. My customers don’t want five pairs of shoes of which they might wear three, they want one special statement piece or stick with the old Converse.”

Obviously Sanderson knows about developments in the market, he is generally a rather business savvy shoe enthusiast. Not only did he manage to open two London flagship stores within six years, he also recently bought a controlling interest in his Italian factory: “To own a factory gives you control not only in the final product, it’s in the delivery, the pricing, the material, the sole, the heel. As an independent shoe designer you can get the sample made perfectly and at the last minute the factory lets you down. You can have the most beautiful shoe in the world, if it’s delivered only a month late, the sell through won’t be good enough.”

To guarantee a good future sell through, Sanderson’s team suddenly starts to clean, hoover and polish in the Mayfair boutique, while the press people quickly order some last minute flowers on the phone. “A lunch meeting with the fashion director of luxury store Selfridges”
I am informed. Sanderson clearly plays in a different league from your average young London designer in a crumbling old warehouse.
 Text > Britta Burger

photos > Marius W. Hansen / www.mariuswhansen.com

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