For the past twenty-five years, Tracey Neuls has used footwear as a way to explore questions of proportion, movement, and form. Although her work sits within fashion, she has always approached shoes as designed objects, considering the wearer in equal parts.
Design Friends welcomes for its 5th conference of season 18 Tracey Neuls, a Canadian footwear designer based in London, where she founded TN29 and her eponymous Tracey Neuls labels. Neuls launched her first commercial collection in 2000 after winning the New Generation Prize at London Fashion Week.
In her talk Tracey will reflect on a series of design investigations that have shaped her work over the years. These include the relationship between the shoe and the body, research into proportion and the role of negative space in defining form.
Much of her work explores the shoe as an extension of the body. She has often sought ways for a heel to continue the line of the leg rather than interrupt it, or for a toe shape to echo the anatomy of the foot while remaining abstract. Through this, she challenges the distinction what we assume to be true versus what is actually in front of us.
One idea that has remained constant throughout her career is that inspiration rarely comes from extraordinary places. Instead, she returns to the smallest details of everyday life. The things we barely notice often become the starting point for a new collection: a shadow, the edge of an object, the curve of a handle, the way two materials meet, or simply watching people walk. She has always been more interested in observing the ordinary than inventing the fantastical.
Looking back over twenty-five years, she can now see ideas that she didn't realise she was pursuing at the time. Her designs are connected by recurring themes of proportion, void, balance and movement. They are not isolated projects but part of an ongoing conversation with herself and with the people who wear her shoes. Rather than presenting a chronological history of her work, she will explore the questions that have kept her curious. The talk offers an opportunity to reflect on how one single idea can evolve over many years, taking different forms while remaining rooted in the same way of looking at the world – always in dialogue with the experience of the wearer.
All our talks are for free (whether you are a member or not), held in English, at the ROTONDES (Rotondes 1) in Luxembourg-Bonnevoie.
