Martin Sallières discovered footwear design early and pursued it through his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven, launching his career in 2018. Since then, he has spent nearly a decade honing his craft across the luxury and contemporary space, developing the rigor and technical fluency that come from designing under real constraints, real factories, real deadlines. That experience, rather than dulling his eye, sharpened it: a close, hands-on understanding of how a shoe is actually built, and of everything that has to be right before a design can call itself simple.

The Brand

Martin Sallières begins with a sketch, and the label tries to protect that first idea all the way to the object. Every model is worked from shape first: proportions, volume, stance, the parts that read before anything else does. The aim is to sit in the space between the formal shoe and the sneaker, not as a compromise between the two but as a single, coherent language where dress codes and sporting ones stop being opposites. That kind of simplicity is deceptive, and hard to get right. With almost nothing to hide behind, every line, every proportion, every millimeter is asked to earn its place, and nothing is meant to be left for detail to resolve.

I think there’s something very special about a sketch. In all its simplicity, it can be the most valuable source of inspiration. It contains just enough to recognise form, withoutcommunicating anything final. For me, l’ébauche pour l’ébauche is not a philosophy. The concept—like the visual sketches themselves—embody something that resembles a vision:

A stage, prior to fully becoming. A contradicting stage of comfort and dissatisfaction. Comforting, because there is a sense of knowing that you could, without having to prove it. Dissatisfaction, because the drawing is only a representation that can’t be interacted with. Since I was able to pick up a pen, I’ve been filling sketchbooks, receipts, notepads and every loose paper I could get my hands on with drawings. Most of the time, I drew without a concrete goal in mind. Even so, I find myself attracted to these sketches whenever a creative pulse is needed.

Like every chef wants to taste their recipes, and every architects want to walk through their blueprints, I want to wear the shoes I draw. I want to watch them age, feel them walk. Both my drawings and I have been longing to be united for far too long.

Now, I’m excited to have a stage where a few of these sketches come to life. Some of them I drew a couple of months ago, others I have held onto for years.

I hope you will enjoy as much as I have.

Sincerely, Martin Sallieres