Art, Inspiration & Remarkability

NÃO Shoes

It's not often you find a product that is truly remarkable. The kind that expresses the true definition that you actually want to remark to your friends about it.

In October I was in Stockholm, Sweden and stumbled across this little shop with an incredible array of coloured shoes in the window called NÃO. I've never seen anything like this before or since, so I went inside and had a look around and a chat with the owner. The shoes are all hand made in Brazil, but it is a special company and a special shoe. They are working hard to make sure it is fair labour practices, to the point of giving people a retirement plan - which ironically they went on strike against. They'd rather have the money in the short term than in the long term. No child labour and no work taken home or over the weekends.

The shoes themselves are an interesting story too. They weigh almost nothing, by far the lightest and most comfortable shoe I've ever owned. The souls are made from 100% post-consumer waste, all recycled bottles and other plastics. The cloth is off-cuts from a handbag factory. Rather than be wasteful, these shoes are taking objects out of landfills and putting them to work to generate revenue for families.

I'm not sure I have ever come across such a remarkable product in such a non-remarkable business vertical. While other shoe manufacturers are trying to compete on new features, NÃO sold me on the societal benefits.

Artist: Alexandre Farto

Wandering around Brick Lane one weekend, I stumbled upon this:

I was told that the artist chiselled away the wall to make this beautiful relief. It wasn't until a few weeks later, flying to Lisbon, Portugal that the inflight magazine had a spread about the artist who created it, Alexandre Farto.

It turns out that it isn't always chiselled, but something much, much, much more dramatic!