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Every pair is unique in this fun collection of designer clogs auctioned for charity |
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These boots aren't made for walking. Designed as art for quirky collectors, they were created to provide educational opportunities for underprivileged children. Some pairs are even destined for overseas travel.
More than 60 pairs of wooden clogs, the traditional Dutch footwear, were decorated last year by local and overseas artists in a Dutch-Chinese collaboration for Business of Design Week 2008. Barney Cheng, Douglas Young and other Hong Kong designers and artists were among dozens of notable individuals from the creative industries who contributed to the worthy cause.
The clogs were exhibited last year at the Red Elation Gallery in Hong Kong. An online auction, which closed last week, raised more than US$9,100 to support Oxfam Hong Kong's "teach the teacher" projects on the Chinese mainland.
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Hong Kong designers Douglas Young, Dee Poon and Barney Cheng at the opening of KLOMP! |
The cross-cultural design-for-charity event, KLOMP! was organised by Three Dogs retail design and sponsored by the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Organiser Esther van Wijck said the aim was to interpret klompen – Europe's oldest form of footwear, dating back 800 years – in innovative ways.
"The result is a riotous range of the most fantastic, original clogs you will find anywhere – and every pair is unique," Ms van Wijck said.
"Sometimes exaggerated, glamorous, surprising and surreal, these creative klompen combine the bizarre with the whimsical, the beautiful with the exaggerated. Letting their imagination run wild, each artist has designed shoes for sensual, visual pleasure."
Bold and Beautiful
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Fashion designer Barney Cheng and his
couture clogs |
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Hong Kong fashion designer Barney Cheng came up with couture clogs featuring gold raffia, topaz-faceted gems and Swarovski crystals latticed with gold and silver Chantilly lace.
"I used an existing beading sample that we created for another client and gave the simple clogs a glam facelift – a celebration of a life less ordinary, taking simple, everyday objects and making them more desirable, more precious, more valuable," Mr Cheng explained to the South China Morning Post.
Douglas Young, founder of the lifestyle retail group GOD, came up with a fun design that gives the illusion of open-toed clogs as worn by Hong Kong butchers.
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Douglas Young with his cheeky
open toes |
KLOMP! is a fun project, but also one with a message. "We believe education, like design, is the basis for any nation to grow," Ms van Wijck said. "So we have supported school projects to give needy children a chance for a better life." The money raised will build a classroom, contributing to the goal of achieving universal primary education.
Ms van Wijck said the group expects the Hong Kong initiative to set a precedent. "We hope to extend this cross-cultural project to other parts of the world, to see great differences in style and imaginative interpretations."
Related link
KLOMP!
