Iva Minkova Footwear | Inspirationist

Iva Minkova creates a breathtaking mix of unexpected shoe materials: leather, glass, metal, acrylic and concrete for modern day City Cinderellas. Her collection for the 2013 RCA Show was futuristic, sculptural and awe-inspiring.

She studied at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Antwerp and at the Sorbonne University in Paris, she interned for Balenciaga, assisted Hecto Castro and Demna Gvasalia. She was a finalist for Perfume Project for Joop!, won the Ossie Clark Award in 2012 and was a runner up for the Manolo Blahnik Award in 2012.

Above: leather+ acrylic+ glass+ metal heel+ Rob Fawcett

leather+ acrylic+ glass+ metal heel+ Rob Fawcett

“We are organic disruptions in this man-made world we’ve created, a world built on the raw beauty of concrete, glass, metal.

Those form an equilibrium in a city that is both majestically solid and incredibly vulnerable. The women that walk through the city, balancing on stilts, reflect this mysterious state of simultaneous hopeless vulnerability and empowerment. Glass scattered on the pavement, reflecting the light like diamonds, becomes their adornment. Stacked broken glass becomes strong under their feet and the concrete thins out to become fragile soles held together by leather.

The world is both hard and cracking, solid and brittle, powerful, yet vulnerable and so are these city cinderellas – sensual, fragile beings of inner strength, perfectly at home among the glass towers and cement walls, needing no one but still hoping for support.” says the collection’s description on RCA’s website.