Lucette Holland has a résumé that would make any footwear designer green with envy. After paying her dues at Christian Louboutin and Balenciaga, she worked in the footwear department of Phoebe Philo’s Celine, often considered a golden age that kick-started fashion’s obsession with ‘ugly’ shoes. She spent eight years between Yeezy Gap and Yeezy Adidas, before the now-infamous breakup, followed by a stint leading Burberry’s footwear division under Daniel Lee, and a jaunt at Veronica Leoni’s Calvin Klein.
But having worked her way into the upper echelons of luxury footwear, Holland couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. “When you see the amount of waste we ship to the Global South, the scope is quite overwhelming,” she says. “So many people in the Global North are unaware of where this stuff goes.”