#8 vanissa antonious, italian factories and being sustainable
Shoes and bags? Trying to be sustainable? Vanissa Antonious would be the one to ask.
She’s been a fashion journalist, a market editor and even a freelance stylist, but now Vanissa Antonious has finally found her calling…shoes. Founder of high luxury accessory brand, Neous, didn’t think it would make such a noise in the industry, but since 2017, the brand’s minimal, contemporary designs have won Neous and Vanissa herself thousands of devoted fans and is stocked at luxury stalwarts Net-a-Porter, Browns Fashion, Selfridges, Harrods and Mytheresa, and has become the go-to label for sleek sculptural shoes with a subtle design twist.
Though she can’t pinpoint the exact moment her love for shoes started, the inspiration behind Neous was the lack of options that spoke to her style, so why not make it yourself? Since timelessness and good quality are the first and foremost important aspects of a good shoe, Vanissa knew the brand had to be made in Italy and by their craftspeople.
“Every single stitch is handmade, there are multiple humans that all have a very special skill on the conveyor, the person that attaches the heel don’t do anything else on the shoe. This is a story we as a brand are still trying to communicate.”
Specifically for footwear, there are at least five components, and in Italy, these are all manufactured in a different factory, “The person who makes the sole cannot make your insole and they can’t stitch your upper, and they can’t make your heel. All the suppliers work and coordinate together, to create a shoe which you can then walk in, and can also walk in at 80/90 millimetres high.” She tells us. The collective work is perfectly balanced, and with such great communication, “if you have an uncomfortable heel it’s because its not balanced well, its because the heel is 0.0001 too tall for the last, do you remember that Prada shoe that fell forward?” Yes, we do, and for those who don’t know, the Prada Spring Summer 2009 show was chaotic to say the least. “The heel was too tall for the shoe, it was pushing them forward, things like that happen if the shoe isn’t made to its best.” And best it was not. The models were slipping and losing balance, due to the heel being an inch too high.
What about Neous’ sustainability? (And by that, I don’t mean secretly greenwashing)
“There’s definitely a lack of information on sustainability in the fashion industry for business owners. The leather conversation is huge, it takes so much time to compare them, but it’s not being shared, and it should be shared.” Despite sustainability consistently being a topical conversation in every area of study, especially in fashion, brands gatekeep their sustainability tactics and with LVMH not sharing much information on how to be more sustainable, it can be extremely hard as an independent business to use more biodegradable materials.
After struggling to speak about sustainability and questioning whether the brand was doing enough, she switched her mindset, “We’re doing the very very best we can, and it’s become less about being sustainable and just more about doing what you feel is right and doing what you can” In a world full of greenwashing and ‘sustainable brands’, the term sustainable almost becomes pointless. “The animals are bred for the meat industry, as long as the animals exist, the skins exist, so if I was to greenwash, I could say all of products are made of waste. Maybe they are? Maybe that’s a way to frame it, but I don’t say that, it’s just taking it a bit too far.”
“At the end of the day, we want to create durable items that will be cherished and last the test of time. I want the shoes to last forever”
