UNTITLAB

The queer, sustainable, Shanghai founded footwear brand making conceptual and c*nty shoes.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY SLAVA MOGUTIN STYLING BY G LAVROVSKII TEXT BY ABI BENITEZ

Happy Friday,

We hope you’ve had a wonderful week. Today we would like to share a story we created for issue 18 of the magazine on the footwear brand untitlab. Their shoes are pretty fantastic, futuristic and highly conceptual.

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The sustainable and experimental footwear brand untitlab — its name fusing “untitled” and “laboratory” — was founded in Shanghai by Nicolas Tian, Sans Peng, and Justin Zen. Their paths intertwined about a decade ago when Tian and Peng were studying product design and Zen was taking environment design at university. A friendship took root at a party, and their collective belief in their brand grew to transcend mere fashion; they envisioned it as “a platform for all of us and a community to create images and express ourselves.”

The initial concept was refreshingly simple: “to create designs that have not been done before.” Peng’s journey involved working for the footwear brand Rombaut in Paris after graduating from Birmingham City University in the U.K., followed by a stint with the renowned fashion designer Angel Chen in China. Disappointed by the absence of a shoe brand that resonated with him, he invited Zen and Tian to embark on a new venture, giving birth to untitlab.

Fashion wears fisherman boots

Miguel also wears the fisherman boots which take cues from the adventurous spirit of outdoor labor.