Galop Marquis is Erik Bjerkesjö’s first array of his own men’s prêt-à-porter – Photography by Magnus Klackenstam
There was a time when if one practiced a specialised skill, one required by law to belong to an artisan guild which protected and harvested the master and apprentice relationship. The guild emblem has ensured for generations that whilst this feudal association has extinguished, centuries on makers of all kinds have built modern metropolises. In the case of Sweden, its nation so vastly synonymous with its design heritage that all forms of modern living: from architecture to urban development and furniture has distilled a consensus for good design.

Amongst a new generation of Swedish designers since the establishment of fashion design courses within the country, Erik Bjerkesjo stands out as a primary example for reforging artisan craft and modernity. His challenge to marry traditional shoe cobbling techniques and a young vision for combining unlikely materials such as silk and leather has rekindled leather shoes pure in its shape and texture.

At Italy’s Polimoda Fashion school of Design headed by Linda Loppa (famed for her fashion teaching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp), Bjerkesjo’s rigorous training became solidified with the close guidance of Patrick de Muynk and Diane Becker. Lecturer and director of the Footwear and Accessories department at the school respectively, propelled Bjerkesjo to incubate his notion for neoclassical footwear.

With shiny, non-porous skins, baroque shapes and the clunkiness of contemporary men’s shoes, Bjerkesjo’s vision were a series of footwear with considered restraint, maturity in leather skins and a lucid cadence for process of hand-made construction. Diane Becker took Bjerkesjo to the serene, sunset hills of Tuscany with trellised vineyards surrounding worn buildings with a familiar red terracotta roof. Here, Bjerkesjo was intimately exposed to a quasi-freemasons family of shoe makers, producing shoe lasts and leather uppers for decades.

To describe his very first of Italian hand-cobbled shoes, they unequivocally oozed with finesse, painstaking laborious stitching, lasting and finishing that it is no reason why then under the wood sole bares the distinguished logomark of the Tuscan shoemakers etched like master carpentry. Bjerkesjo enthuses over the time-consuming processes which are in separate stages over two phases:

Phase 1: Clicking Room, Preparation Room and Closing Room
The awl is used to hole punch the fine surface of the leather and where it will be also cut into separate pieces using a scalpel. The individually cut leather pieces will then be sewn together forming a nascent silhouette.

Phase 2: Lasting Room, Making Room and Finishing Room
The outer silhouette of the shoe is outfitted with a wooden last giving its structural shape. The edges cusped over and under the sole of the shoe using metal pins to affix it. The wooden sole outer edges are carefully etched allowing hand-stitching of the sole’s outer rim. The wooden sole is then Blake stitched (attaching the sole, upper and last together). The painting of the sole is completed in the Finishing Room along with the 18 caret gold pins for the shoe’s heel and etching of the logomark and Bjerkesjo’s name.

The finished result of an Italian cobbled shoe cloistered by a typically Scandinavian methodology – Photography by Ola Bergengren
The results are tomes themselves, each designed shoe ‘Salvatore’ an ankle boot with a slanted upper, ‘Florence’ a silk lace derby shoe or ‘Rogue’ with its perforated side holes holding a vacuum of artisan craftsmanship. Bjerkesjö explains, “It’s very light and takes about a week to make, corrugated velvet can be tricky to work with, but I think my shoes came out perfectly.” A plethora of Swedish media publications have adorned their pages with a prestigious newcomer and for good reason. In 2009, the venerable Florence luxury store Luisa Via Roma presented Bjerkesjo’s shoe range in-store with window frontage co-displayed with Belgian designers Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann.

This month at Rue de Chazelles in Paris, a city in which Bjerkesko plans to build his own atelier himself, his multi-faceted oeuvre has stretched out to men’s prêt-a-porter. Entitled, ‘Galop Marquis’ the same musical score title by Polish composer Frederic Francois Chopin, the prêt-a-porter range suggests a tonality of flight, devoid of restriction. His clothes emanate in flight such that the treated jackets, oil paint splattered shirts and leather mackintoshes collude in utility. Compared to the complimentary photoshoot that accompanied his first shoe range entitled, ‘Decades’ photographed by Ola Bergengren, ‘Galop Marquis’ is suspended by gravity and the latter by chiaroscuro where carved wooden staircases, grandeur parquetry floors and gallant busts emphasise the neo-classical nature of Bjerkesjo’s work.

Loppa’s ease in identifying Erik Bjerkesjö’s mastered ability to translate ideas in carefully orchestrated misc-en-scenes for his shoe and now men’s collection, seriously demonstrates an aptitude for skillfully uprooting a soon to be flourishing eponymous brand.

Continue to preview an exclusive showcase of Erik Bjerkesjö’s forthcoming images for his collections
Erik Bjerkesjö – www.erikbjerkesjo.com