Famed architects step into fashion design

on Tuesday,October 13,2009 16:10

Frank Gehry is well known as a Pritzker Prize-winning deconstructinoalist architect whose curveo-linear designs are more form than function, but now he is treading in a new realm of design - conceiving fashionable footwear.

Sponsored by the French shoe company J.M. Weston, Gehry - who has also designed jewelry for Tiffany & Co. - and his son, artist Alejandro Gehry, have produced a six-buttoned black-and-white leather boot that recalls a wingtip shoe dressed in spats.

Frank Gehry is not the first architect to venture into shoe design, with architects like Bernard Rudofsky creating a line of sandals, Ito Morabito working with stilettos and Zaha Hadid launching a series of men''s and women''s leather boots for Lacoste.

"You shouldn’t have to differentiate between disciplines," Gehry tells Architectural Record. "Shoes are very architectural and always have been, and even more recently there are new shoes… (that are) buildings."

Some of Gehry''s most famous works have included the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and his own home in Santa Monica.