Last Comes First | Guillaume Philibert
As some of you may be aware, a few months ago I wrote an article entitled “Footwear Sculpture” for Crepe City Magazine‘s Colette dedicated issue, all about the importance of the last.
To give the article a little more credence, we reached out to a few industry insiders to get their thoughts on the importance of the last. We unfortunatley couldn’t fit all the gems we recieved into the article, so I thought it would make sense to create a series displaying some of the quotes and thoughts that we recieved.
First up is Filling Pieces‘ Creative Director & Founder, Guillaume Philibert. Arguabely one of the brands that has influenced current silhouette trends the most over recent years, Filling Pieces continues to push their brand DNA forward and continuously execute at a very high level.
Below are some quotes from Guillaume about what lasts mean to him, and just how integral they’ve been, and continue to be, to Filling Pieces’ success.
Big thanks to Guillaume and his team for helping put the piece together and for always being so accommodating.
“Design for me is solving problems, I started the brand because of a lack of good qualitative product out there.”
“Architecture, like footwear design is Art with a technical side, which makes it interesting. The balance between form and function is important here.”
“Form follows function, an important ideology within architecture, is our main religion at FP design. We would never add certain design details if there is no funtionality. If you look at our product you see certain design lines always coming back and we made that ours, like the circle shape at the heel collar, that was born our of the ankel shape of a human feet.”
“The Filling Pieces last is something I probably spend the most time on. The first production runs where made in Asia but we quickly moves to Portugal, where we were able to be more creative without boundaries.
The triangle shape in our side profile comes from the last, I never liked a toe spring in a shoe so I worked at least 6 months on getting the right last done; The last is the heart of the shoe, not only aesthetically, but also fit and function wise. A lot of people just think they will make a footwear piece and take a regular last”
“The months we spend on getting the right last is coming to fruition now with consumers coming back with great positive comments and keep buying into our brand.”
“One of the most frequently asked questions within our design esthetic is the question about our tongue and heel, where the tongue is very functional like the heel.
The tongue was designed as a way to tuck your pants behind, show the full front of the shoe and have a unique and recognizable detail where you can recognize a FOP shoe from miles away.
The heel looks very puffy and lux with the padding, foam and stitching, while is actually gives more comfort and strength to the heel and back part of a human foot.”
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