Slemazine coming soon!

As of Friday September 14 you can download the next issue of Slemazine, featuring trend info for SS 2014, a preview of the best footwear graduation works from around the globe and our GDS lectures, for all of you who could not come to Dusseldorf! To not spoil the fun for those who are here, we decided not to release the issue until after the show.

SLEM @ GDS

Are you at GDS in Dusseldorf this week? Please come see our booth in Hal 3E03 and enjoy our spectacular preview of the "Watch our Steps" exhibition, featuring the best graduation works from ArtEZ (Arnhem), Royal College of Art (London) and Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry (Tokyo).

As an extra bonus you have us teach you how to lace your shoes.... in a better way :-)

Furthermore, you are welcome to join our free seminars in the speaker's corner in Hal 7.

SLEM Masterclass Industrial Footwear Design

Have you always wanted to become a professional footwear designer for the industry? Then read our updated brochure for the six-month Masterclass Industrial Footwear Design that starts in January 2013.

Open publication - Free publishing - More design

SLEM activities 2012

Curious about our exhibitions, lectures, courses and workshops for 2012? You can now read and/or download our latest brochure!

Open publication - Free publishing - More courses

SLEM introduces TEAM1

Not only does SLEM offer education for footwear students and professionals, the organization as such is a school as well, providing traineeships to students. We proudly present our first team of trainees who will help build SLEM from scratch.

SLEM @GDS

Amber Verstegen

At the upcoming GDS in Dusseldorf, from September 5-7, SLEM will present its first activities in a brand new spacious booth on a brand new location in Hall 3! Visitors of GDS can visit two free seminars and see a preview of the spectacular expo Watch Our Steps. For the first time ever the best footwear graduation works from around the world will be shown together! The full exhibition can be seen at  Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, from October 20-28, but exclusively for GDS we will highlight works from the graduates of the new Master of Shoe Design course from ArtEZ, as well as the Royal College of Art, London College of Fashion and the Hiko Mizuno Academy from Tokyo. You could say the expo is a trend forecast as such, giving insight into future style themes, new technologies and sustainable ideas.

MM&F Leather Trends SS 2013

For those of you working on your SS 2013 collection we have just uploaded four new photo albums to our fb page with all the images we took of the leather trend forum at the MM&T (Materials, Manufacturing & Technology) fair in Hong Kong this week, one of the important material shows for the Asian footwear and leather goods market.

There are four separate themes and each album contains the description provided by MM&T, including the pantone numbers. The differences between the trend stories are mainly in the use of colour though, since you find artificial grains, creases, (fantasy) reptile prints, iridescent or uneven colours, transparent finishes, cosmetic metallics, fine perforations, floral prints and geometric waves and textures throughout.

Fashion Access HK eyecatchers

We are now following the seminar program at the Prime Source Forum in HK, but in between lectures we sneak out to visit the trade shows that are held in the same building, such as Fashion Access, a trade show for footwear, leather goods and accessories. Even though officially it is a show for finished products, it features the odd mixture of suppliers, manufacturers and private labels that many Asian shows have.

Local brands

However, the fashion and quality level is going up, with local Chinese brands such as Wasabi. 

Studs and spikes were all over the place at European shows like Micam as well, yet Asian brands always manage to maintain a feminine, elegant and sometimes even cute look. 

Leather and the environment

We are currently in Hong Kong attending a few conferences and trade shows on which we will report in the coming days, so stay tuned. Last Tuesday we kicked off our trip with the "Leather and the Environment" seminar organized by the BLC Leather Technology Center from Northhampton (UK).

Calculating the costs of natural services

One of the highlights for us was the lecture by Reiner Hengstmann, Global Director of the PUMA.Safe program through which Puma aims to reduce its own carbon footprint and raise work and production standards globally. He presented the company's first Environ-mental Profit and Loss Account (E P&L) for the year 2010.
An E P&L is a profit and loss account that measures the immense value of ecosystem services - such as fresh water, clean air, healthy biodiversity and productive land - to a business, revealing the true costs of a business’s impacts on nature. It showed that if Puma would have had to pay for the ecosystem services their entire supply chain used in 2010, they would have had to report a loss of 145 million euros!
Unfortunately nature does not have a bank account to help replenish its resources, yet Puma made the E P&L to help anyone involved in their supply chain understand the magnitude and importance of their impacts on the environment, so strategic decisions can be made to reduce them most effectively.

Brochure Masterclass Industrial Footwear Design

You can find all information about our upcoming Masterclass in Industrial Footwear Design in our brochure:

Open publication - Free publishing - More shoe design

Historic images

On our blog and in our magazine we have used a few historic images of Waalwijk, yet we apologize for not mentioning that these are from the Gemeentearchief Waalwijk (images 20400 and 10333). In this archive you find many more wonderful historic images of the shoe industry in Waalwijk, so it is worth a visit, even if it is only a virtual one!

image 40417 from the Gemeentearchief Waalwijk, showing part of the facilities of the former school for shoemaking.

SLEM Magazine No. 1

After almost two years of preparation we are very proud to introduce our new footwear innovation and education center called SLEM, by means of the first SLEM magazine. You will find that this digital magazine is filled with an abundance of valuable information about footwear innovation and education, presenting both long term and short term developments in footwear design.

The first issue is now available for download for only 15 euros!  Buy Now  

It has over 130 pages, covering the following subjects:

New Masterclass in Industrial Footwear Design

Because the part-time version of the course in industrial footwear design is such a success - since all graduates have found work in this field - we are now starting a full-time international version. In the magazine you will find all details about this unique six-month shoe design masterclass.

Footwear trends for autumn/winter 2013-14, including colour palettes 
SLEM will also provide trend information, made by its creative director Nicoline van Enter, who is renowned for the forecasts she made with her agency Ytrends. On more than 70 pages she reveals the trends for Autumn/Winter 2013-14, presenting information from a variety of sources, from footwear trade shows to exhibitions and catwalks. The forecast covers the trends for both men's and women's shoes and sneakers.

The best in folded footwear

As soon as we knew that we would unfold our plans for SLEM at the GDS footwear trade show in Düsseldorf in March of 2012, we arranged an inspiring exhibition called "The Future (Un)Folds" especially for this occasion. It features the best in folded footwear from around the world; showing experimental graduation projects as well as groundbreaking commercial ideas. 

We approach the principle of folding from various angles, including both hand crafted and high-tech varieties. In the magazine you find the full catalogue of the exhibition (53 pages), showing even more work than we could present in Germany, including background information about all the works and contact details of the designers.
The exhibition was made in collaboration with The Virtual Shoe Museum.

SLEM is a nonprofit organization, which is why we can maintain such affordable prices. At only 15 euros the magazine is accessible for everyone, including students. And by buying it you are supporting our activities! 
To order you can simply click the button below which will automatically guide you to Paypal, where you can pay through bank account or credit card. You will then receive a unique individual download link by email. Please allow a few minutes for the download to start. For any questions and input, please email us at: slem.waalwijk@gmail.com.

Buy Now

Introducing SLEM

What is SLEM?

In the previous century, during the golden days of the European footwear industry, the leather and footwear manufacturers based in the ‘Longstreet’ area in the south of Holland organized big exhibitions presenting the latest developments in the business, attracting visitors from all over the world. These were called SLEM, which was short for ‘schoenen leder en mode’, meaning shoes, leather and fashion. The last SLEM exhibition was held in 1953, almost 60 years ago. With the downfall of the local shoe industry, due to the rise of low cost labour abroad, the exhibitions stopped. Now the name SLEM (Shoes, Leather, Education, Museum) is revived in the form of a new education and innovation center for the footwear business, aiming to develop and teach innovative knowledge and skills to both students and professionals.  

Where is SLEM?

SLEM is based in Waalwijk, the center of the ‘Longstreet’ area, in the south of The Netherlands, about one hour drive from Amsterdam. To some this might not sound as the most obvious place to start an innovation and education center for footwear, yet what most people don’t realize is that The Netherlands - even though it is a small country - is among the biggest importers and exporters of footwear in the world. The Dutch are known for their trading skills and these have led them to develop shoes for companies around the globe. Furthermore, Dutch Design has made a great name for itself in the past decades, due to the original Dutch sense of style, keeping both feet firmly on the ground whilst displaying a keen sense of humour. Holland is also leading in scientific research; for instance, Dutch research center TNO in Eindhoven was the first to develop a fully functional 3D printed shoe back in 2006.

What does SLEM do?

As many footwear manufacturers were forced to close or move abroad, most schools for the footwear industry closed their doors as well. Yet knowledge is key to be able to compete, so we noticed a growing need for footwear education. Of course the shoe business has changed a lot over the past decades, yet many courses still focus mainly on making shoes by hand, as was done in the past. At SLEM we will bridge the gap between past, present and future by researching and teaching both historic and new knowledge about footwear and leather. We will do this by collaborating with both the Dutch Shoe and Leather Museum and high-tech research facilities. Together we will offer a new international Masterclass in Industrial Footwear Design for students and a broad range of workshops for professionals looking to update and increase their knowledge.

How can you get involved?

SLEM is a modern ‘open source’ facility, allowing as many parties as possible to contribute. To make certain that SLEM will do the best job possible, we ask you to let us know what subjects you would like to learn more about or who you would like to be your teacher. SLEM is a nonprofit organization based largely on ‘crowd funding’, so anyone can contribute, no matter how small the amount. For instance, currently we ask for your donations to help build the SLEM shoe gallery, which will be a unique place for footwear designers, students and artists from all over the world to present their work to both people from the industry and the general public. Even our logo is ‘open source’, allowing you to adjust it to your liking by sketching in and around the letters. 






SLEM is made possible by: