We love the concept behind Clarks Originals – re-envisioning classic styles with a contemporary edge is an almost foolproof creative approach.  To be clear, we’re not talking about dusting off a leather trench from c.  1999 Matrix-era and rocking that bad boy to your trendy Silicon Roundabout office on Monday morning. The ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach can only take you so far; anything beyond that needs to be a little more refined.

Arise, Sir Creative Collaboration. We’re living in an age where this marketing buzzword gone wrong (or right) rules the roost in terms of aesethetics, and it’s no bad thing at all. Clarks Originals was born with two essential shoe designs:

 

1. The Desert Boot – The Originals original, the Desert Boot was designed in 1949 by Nathan Clark and launched at the Chicago Shoe Fair a year later. It’s inspiration was a crepe-soled boot made from rough suede in Cairo’s fabled Old Bazaar and the footwear of choice for off-duty Eighth Army officers. The simple lines and conspicuous comfort were an instant hit and the first ever casual shoe was born.
2. The Wallabee – Following in Nathan’s footsteps, Lance Clark created another original – the Wallabee. Inspired by a moccasin made by a company called Sioux, it was developed in 1961 at the Clarks owned Padmore & Barnes factory in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Originally called ‘Grasshopper’ (for copyright reasons the name Wallabee was coined when the shoe first crossed the Atlantic) it was constructed around the nature form last.

Clarks, frankly, have done a brilliant job tapping up teammates for their new Originals collection for S/S ’14, parterning up with the likes of  notorious hip-hop artist DOOM to take styles we’ve always loved and update them to be a mark of pride rather than faded embarrassment (cf: Matrix trench coat, above).

Check out the Clarks Originals/DOOM mash-up version of the Wallabee shoe (Limited Edition SS14 version) above,  along with some more stand-out looks from the new collection (for which they also collaborated with the Patternity Organisation) below:

And some classic DOOM to round things up…