Footwear2025concept

RELICS

Design as artifact

RELICS, both shoes together, the open branching upper reading as one cast piece — The pair

RELICS is a shoe built to look excavated rather than manufactured. The upper is an open cage of ribs and hollows, closer to a rib cage or a weathered shell than to anything cut from a pattern, and it wraps a sole that reads as the ground the object was found in.

RELICS from above, the branches meeting over the foot and the opening between them — From above

RELICS from behind, the heel closing over a sole of round pads — From behind

Nothing about it is trying to look new. The lattice is uneven on purpose, the openings vary in size the way erosion varies, and the whole thing is dark enough that you read the structure as shadow before you read it as material.

RELICS turned three quarters from behind, the branches running down into the sole — Three quarters

It belongs to the 2025 footwear studies where the question stopped being "what should this look like" and became "what should this look like it has been through".

Medium: Footwear concept, 3D render
Role: Designer

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