Success in the fashion industry pretty much rides on one’s inquisitiveness to experiment no matter what. One can go far ahead with this simple formula. And it’s the footwear world where there is a big revolution going on full steam and there is no turning back from it for an Argentine-born London-based shoe designer Simonetta Alejandra whose exaggerated designs fit in with the enigma of avant-garde.

In an exclusive interview, I sit down with her to find out what got her into the making of shoes, how she sees them and much more.

Alejandra’s tryst with shoe design came to swing into action although she was consciously not sure about how the overall thing would pan out. It just happened. More or less, the idea of designing such kind of shoes wasn’t on her mind when she began to take steps bit by bit toward exploring the creative process pertaining to this promising field. “I’ve always been interested in architecture, structures, chairs and objects with exquisite patterns. I do buy into the fact that less is more and that a good balance between materials, colors and shapes is essential for a great design and this is what finally led me to make avant-garde shoes at last,” she says.

First of all, Alejandra did her BA in Fashion and Textile Design. Then, she took a lot of courses in Footwear Design too. However, she began to regard herself as a full-fledged designer only after completing her Master’s in Fashion Footwear from London College of Fashion in 2014 where she learnt the gamut of these skills one by one in its most accurate form.

Enrolling at LCF proved to be quite a significant factor in getting Alejandra where she stands today. “It helped me a great deal because my tutor was able to see and understand my style and where I wanted to go with it. I was pushed hard enough to be able to reach my goal and expose what I had in my mind. So thanks to him and the amazing technicians of LCF, I was able to make it as a designer,” she says.

To sustain herself, Alejandra works as a freelance designer creating commercial style shoes for other brands, but it’s her conceptual shoe work that defines who she is. “These unique designs stand for who I’m and the beauty that I see is better expressed through them. The shoes represent my vision of what else they could be. I don’t see them just as footwear. In fact, I see them as objects that interact with our body and that they can be explored in unconventional ways to actually rediscover them with new twists and turns,” she says.

Looking at these weird shoes, one might be compelled to guess that they won’t be comfortable to wear in the slightest. Yet for designers like her the issue of comfort is vitally important. “It does matter to me, but it depends on the context that the shoes will belong to. The concept for my project “External Bones” was based on a gallery environment so comfort was not the priority,” she says. “Its aim was to solely create new aesthetics in the development of soles and heels while deconstructing and exposing internal components of them like the shank.”

For the collection titled “External Bones”, she named it as such inspired by the relation between skeletons in nature and architecture. She identified the shank of the shoe as its skeleton. “The shank supports our body and lets us walk while wearing high heels. By externalizing the shank of the shoe, I sought to radically change the traditional way of making shoes,” Alejandra says.

Good things require a select of good components in order to give them a perfect contour they deserve. So Alejandra ingeniously used a myriad of fine materials from stainless steel to copolymer, polypropylene, plaster, clear resin to salmon fish skin and cowhide leather to design her products.

“In general, metal and leather are a must‒have in my shoes,” she says, adding that she went as far as South America, Chile to bring salmon fish skin. She also paid a visit to a company called “North Sea Plastics” in Glasgow providing her with thermoplastics she needed, but the rest she got within London.

The role models she gets mesmerized by come from all walks of life. “They are artists or makers who are extremely talented and skilled and they aren’t still aware of this untapped potential. It’s not just about the well‒known ones. It’s also about those who work locally and make beautiful creations with a high level of craftsmanship,” she says. “These unknown talents are a huge source of inspiration. I also look at the works of industrial designers, jewelers, architects or fashion artists.”

The color combination, which has been kept quite understated, is an effort made to help renew the overall look of the shoes. Because of her tactile shoe designs garnering a lot of attention from the start, it’s no wonder she has been part of several collaborative projects with the likes of Charlotte Asherson Jewelry, The Forest Magazine, Schon Magazine, and Dark Beauty Magazine and so on. “Working with different groups of creative people allows you to learn new things that ultimately act as your weaponry to achieve what you want in life. And the ones with whom I worked shared the varying degrees of ways that I might take into account while designing a pair of shoes,” she says. “The experience has been really amazing in a nutshell.”

The other interesting aspect related to Alejandra’s exciting and bold designs is that she creates these astonishing wonders from her studio in London, a city she just loves and is her second home as she explains, “London has always had a big influence on me as a designer. This city is a big source of inspiration by itself. The incredible diversity of people living here and just walking around can be extremely useful when it comes to discovering ourselves as designers.”

She believes museums, fair markets and art galleries the city has to offer all contribute massively to this purpose too. “There is something within this city that makes you feel that you can be yourself without thinking about what others say. As designers, we learn to live harmoniously with the critics side by side, but at the same time being able to stand stronger and still be yourself. London’s eternal charm has a lot to do with that,” Alejandra admits.

While there is artistic elegance in her complex designs (the thing that made her the Winner of The Cordwainers Dato’s Jimmy Choo Award 2014), it’s also important to bear in mind that the technical aspect has been equally crucial. “In order to work and experiment with materials and create these kinds of mind-boggling shapes, there is a lot of technical execution needed,” she says.

As she aims high, she knows where she sees herself five years down the line. “I would like to keep on working to develop conceptual and experimental footwear. It would be great to have more collaboration on projects that could take place not just in London, but also in other parts of the globe,” she says.

Meanwhile, she is busy developing conceptual shoes for a cinematographic artist Maria Guerberof for one of her short commercials. Then, she would create three pairs of shoes for “Craft the Leather edition 2015-16” as part of several exhibitions that will be taking place in different parts of the world next year. “And after that only, I would be able to concentrate on designing another collection of mine with the same shock ‘n’ awe tenacity,” Alejandra smiles.

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