Between The Lines 018: Nina Christen
Formulaic Footwear Design
With Nina Christen
Words: Siân Toolan
From Bottega to Loewe, Nina Christen is the brains behind some of the most iconic shoes of the last decade. You might not recognise her name, but you’ve undoubtedly witnessed her work. It’s time we got to know the similarly self-professed footwear nerd, her prolific archive of product and her formulaic footwear approach…
It’s rare that in our connected world of footwear we come across someone with a huge footprint in the industry whose name we haven’t yet heard. Someone who’s made moves in silence, working with the biggest names in luxury fashion to deliver footwear that has defined trends, dominated social media and defied limitations: welcome to the world and mind of Nina Christen.
Born in Switzerland, Christen has collected shoes for as long as she remembers, but it wasn’t until she studied design in Paris that she discovered a “natural instinct” for designing them and fell smitten with “the artisanal world of shoes”. Though she holds two degrees in fashion design, Christen credits her apprenticeship in tailoring in informing her success; the technicality of pattern-cutting providing parallels with functional design, “be it a lamp, machine or footwear”. For a while, she found herself at Karl Lagerfield’s atelier, meticulously constructing and sewing clothing, solidifying both her appreciation for the process of making and the hands that make product. It’s from here that Christen’s resumé moves from big house to big house, an internship at Balenciaga under the forward-thinking Ghesquiere, into her first position as a Shoe Designer with Saint Laurent under Stefano Pilati and into the reign of Hedi Slimane. She’s worked under Phoebe Philo at Celiné, for Dries Van Noten and Daniel Lee at Bottega Veneta.
Throughout her career, she’s always worked in her own set-up; her own “little world”, studying the intricacies of footwear, from the insole to the outer, tracing new developments in the industry, building relationships whilst finding her signature as a designer. Her relationship with Daniel Lee began at Celiné and, by the time of his appointment at Bottega, Nina was the undeniable right choice. As a creator and collaborator, Christen maintains that “the most important thing is that relationship with your main collaborator, the artistic director - human relationships always come before anything else”. Her design approach dips into the psychological, mapping different people and their approaches, reading identities without erasing the qualities that define her own. As such, each new role marks a moment in her design journey, a reflection of a new relationship and unique “point of interest”. There are in fact, so many possibilities in footwear that it is important to separate brands; “to create different identities for different houses” and that’s part of Christen’s magic: great, memorable design without repetition.
“Sometimes I just write down a shoe, as though a formula, without even needing to draw it”
Bottega was the first representation of Christen’s creativity without limitations, not only did it involve a multitude of projects at one time, but Daniel Lee gave her “carte blanche”. That’s total freedom: no expectations and no budget. She could bring everything she had collected over the years together, in terms of: technique; in terms of knowledge, material, colour, style; “it was just this huge explosion of things”. Despite Daniel’s faith, in the early stages, Christen recalls doubts of her vision and affinity for volume “people would say it’s too big, no one is going to buy it” and undoubtedly, the volumes were huge, but when the first orders started to roll in, no one said any more. Borrowing cues from her work with French master boot-makers Aigle, she transformed Wellington boots into a “must-have” accessory: the unforgettable Puddle boot. When they first poked beneath pants in Bottega’s AW20, the boots garnered attention for their material: a biodegradable recycled polymer rubber, free from synthetic chemicals, that was surprisingly lightweight, created from a one-piece mould and lined with comfortable cotton. “There wasn’t that many technical outdoorsy high-fashion stuff around when we put that out” explains Christen, however, by the time the AW20 collection dropped, we were amid the pandemic and there was a return to practicality, utilitarianism, and a call for gorpcore as people commenced their vital daily excursions. Dominating social media, and adopted by a vast array of celebrity, the playful, practical Puddles were the first time Christen’s work was recognised on that level and it was an undeniably “good feeling”, she laughs.
During her tenure at Bottega, Christen delivered a magnitude of statement styles, with her personal product highlight being the Lido Sandal. Just like the Puddles, there’s a lot more to them than initially meets the eye as their woven design is one of the “most complex ever” with each individual component proving a new element of difficulty and a huge development process that “broke so many rules”. It’s a "very special shoe” explains Christen, one that has been produced in the thousands, so successful that factories had to scale up to be able to produce the quantities. For Christen, it’s working with factories and suppliers that fuels her approach, not only through pushing their capabilities but through her commitment to building relationships. The success of her work has brought huge production runs to small factories, fostering belief and trust in her as a designer, while her history making clothes has equally created a “connection to the people that make things”. It’s where she feels the most herself, where she is able to learn: ”they’re the most motivated and amazing collaborators, never scared to try something out, always finding a solution”. Unlike most designers, Christen doesn’t have a design assistant, but rather engages directly with the factories, calling up owners to divulge their vast technical knowledge, and maintaining a continual back and forth to organically reach her goals. She believes, just like “Elon at Tesla” this working method closes the gap between the design and engineering of footwear - “it puts them at the same level” - and ensures every decision, technique and material is considered in the process. It’s where “nerd-mode truly comes out”.
It’s pretty hard not to be nerdy when it comes to shoes. At least for us, anyway. Despite every considered design detail or innovative technique, there’s a specific intangible quality to Christen’s designs; a personal touch; a charming nerdy quality. If you line up her designs over the years you’ll see it: interesting and smart but never too serious. “I think my agenda is always very innocent and pure in a way, as I feel a shoe can really bring pleasure and joy in a visual sense and at so many levels” explains Christen. “A shoe is like a person, it's layered, it has personality, or it doesn’t” and that’s exactly why sometimes you don’t know why you like a shoe but you know that you do, you feel it. For years, her driving force has been this desire to produce some kind of emotion, “to evoke something” and, whilst the viral motions of social media are the last thing on her mind, the more extreme this feeling is, often the more the more viral the design becomes. This is perhaps best demonstrated by her work with Loewe.
Nina Christen’s connection with Jonathan Anderson is unsurprising given their mutual appreciation for the functional and frivolous; for the tongue-in-cheek. Just like Anderson’s vision of Loewe, Christen enjoys transforming the everyday; the banal into new realities: “it’s funny how something that is around you all the time can at some point become something else entirely”. There’s a lot of diversity within her SS23 debut for Loewe: huge EVA heels, delicate sandals with sculptural flowers, shoes shrouded in a sea of unblown balloons, but what they share is Christen’s specific sensibility. The Comic Foam Pumps provided an opportunity to push the possibilities of EVA, which is undeniably fun with an unlimited budget, as “EVA is very abstract until materialised” and you really don’t know what you’ll get until the product comes out. The clownish proportions of the Foam Pumps defined an attitude and purposefully showcased the sheer achievement of creating something of this scale and technical level in EVA. Continuing to explore the technique, Christen offered an alternative take with delicate leather heels with hyper-real sculptural anthurium lilies appliquéd to their profile, paying homage to organic, natural elements and Anderson’s well-known love of flowers. The process behind Christen’s polarising balloon shoes might be a secret she’ll never tell, but she’s ready for a new era in her work at The Row. Confessing her evolution as a designer, away from the need for a response, and back towards the banal, the simple, the technical, she’s in the right place. Combined with her personal compatibility with the brand’s founders - who are notoriously private and focused - it’s an opportunity to work on products that are completely different to her repertoire and continue to develop as a designer.
Working for such a scope of international brands, with her main base in Zurich, we can’t help but wonder how she’s done it, how one person has achieved so much so quietly. This approach, whilst a natural fit at the Row, has been part of her process for some time. Switzerland, a neutral place, is like a “blank slate”, away from the fashion world, where “you don’t step out the door to people dressed in brands”. She can dip her toe into the worlds, styles, inspirations and relationships of Paris, London, Italy, but she also has somewhere to retreat to think and draw. “After years in the domain you can actually start to create your process, it’s rarely there from the beginning, it creates itself with time”. Today, she asks herself how she wants to feel in a shoe and intuitively puzzles things together. “I, quite precisely, construct things in my mind, somehow. Sometimes I just write down a shoe, as though a formula, without even needing to draw it”. These formulas consider thickness, heights, techniques, texture, colour and all of the functions in some sort of masterful mind-map. Each design is built “like a layer cake” and she’ll work on each component individually to ensure every element retains detail, is as rich as every other component and part of a wider story. It’s the approach of “a scientific laboratory rather than fantasy. It's a cold blooded design process. It’s pragmatic” she explains. But it’s this pragmatism that actually creates space for the unknown, for new things. Whether it’s working with with dog groomers to discover volumes of fur for ready-to-wear or immersing herself in factories, she’s designing based on working parts. This analytical approach, married with her strong interpersonal relationships, and relationship to emotion, feeling and intuition, is her recipe for good design.
It’s easy to see that Christen loves what she does. So much so that she’s rarely thought of self-promotion, “I take a lot more pleasure in actually working than communicating that I am working”. It’s only in the modern climate that the latter is equally as crucial as the product. This year, however, she took her first step out of the shadows working with ECCO Leather’s At.Kollective project under her own name, alongside the likes of Kiko Kostadinov, and soon, she plans to launch her very own brand. She has the business collaborators lined up in the tech world, people that understand the practicalities of her approach, and most importantly, she feels it’s the right time. There’s a delicate balance in all of Christen’s work, her scientific approach is never uninspired or dull, her sense of humour is never crass or ridiculous. Her marriage of technicality and engineering with artistry has branded her work with a unique industrial elegance, one that’s hard to pin down and continues to evolve. Ultimately, she believes that the base of her work, of anyone’s work, really is actually always “who you are as a person.” In that case, Nina Christen is a multi-faceted designer, a genuine person that values people and the hand-made, with the right amount of pragmatism to bring big ideas to life. We really can’t wait to see what this means for her own brand.