“Even if we, as designers, design the entire shoe, each of us really only designs a small part of it. There are many more designers involved in the production chain before we step in. Take the lace hooks on this shoe, for example. They come from our lace hook supplier in Portugal. The owner is obsessed with his profession. These hooks are his design. And so every step in the chain has its own designers. The tanners work with designers for the leather, and the suppliers of chemicals for the tanning process have designers, too. They have to work far ahead, and acquire knowledge of the popular looks in three years from trend agencies, who of course also work with designers. So, during the whole process of making a shoe, quite a few designers are involved. All of them have contributed to a nice casual sneaker with a cool zig-zag pattern at the heel and a double tongue under the laces (I could joke about the fact that we came up with the idea for the double tongue after 2 bottles of red wine, but I better leave it at that.)”