Footwear students to appear at Moda Footwear
Six Footwear Design students from De Montfort University in the UK have been chosen to showcase their work at Moda Footwear. The show runs February 21-23 in Birmingham.
The students took part in a final-year project to design shoes that “bring the rich heritage of the footwear industry into the twenty-first century”. ‘History in the Making’, a collaborative project between the university and Moda Footwear, produced six winners including Taiwanese couple Toby Chih-Hao Lo and Chelsea Yu-Chi Liu, who are both studying Footwear Design at the university.
Mr Chih-Hao Lo is from a shoemaking background and his family owns a shoe company called Dragon Year in Taichung, where he grew up.
“We are really delighted to both be selected to show our work at Moda,” Ms Yu-Chi Liu said. “My theme is [the] Victorian era and I’ve used not only the old styles but also the new styles influenced by Victorian fashions. I love the ruffles and bustle skirts so I used a lot of them when I designed the shoes and my final design is based on Queen Victoria’s bustle skirts.”
She added: “I used white leather, textile and elastic webbing on the vamp and very nice red vegetable tan leather for the large decorative plume on the heel. The inspiration of the heel is from ornate wooden designs of Victorian architecture and furniture.”
Kevin Guildford, head of footwear at DMU, said: “This project has given students the chance to show their designs in front of huge industry audience which will open up fantastic opportunities for them.”
