With the ever changing trends, the statement shoes take a variety of forms. While there are a multitude of styles which gain this title every season, there are very few collections fully committed to be entire statements and even fewer draw a cautionary message in them. The Anastasia Radevich ‘Lost Civilizations’ collection, however, is committed to doing all of that.
The designer’s latest collection provides breath-taking designs while warning us about the imminent dangers the current path of thinking will have on the future of humanity. The designer briefly explained the thought process behind the newest collection: “The challenge was to reflect on an abstract concept in the shapes and details of a shoe. I then developed the details of the piece and selected the materials and experimented with texture and the appearance. I thought of the strength of design and how it had to support the message AND convey the mystery to draw the viewer to the shoe piece. So I reinforced that message with nontraditional methods of sculpting of components of the shoes.”
The collection has three parts representing the past, the present and the possible future should we go on the current path. “The ‘Past’ will walk you through civilizations that, despite all technological advancements, were doomed to vanish. They have been submerged beneath the seas, after the sea level rose and flooded lands that have been host to the humans before. The shoe pieces have textures reminiscent to those brought up from the depth of the oceans and aesthetics of those civilizations. The constructions of shoes is sculpted from metal and then galvanized and rusted,” she explained.
The tone of the collection becomes even more evident for the designs which emphasize the present. The message is strong and extremely straight-forward: “The ‘present’ exciting time to live, massive challenges to overcome. It took nature 5,000,000 years to create the amount of fossil fuels we consume. Drilling, rigging, fracking, tar sands, mountain top removal… If the Earth is indeed a living organism, as many ancient tribes believe, how long before it shakes us off as one pesty parasite?”.
The message ‘This Will Destroy You’ is the one that best represents the present and two pairs of jaw dropping shoe designs serve as the best reminders. Granted, the feet of the person wearing such designs might have a similar fate, but resisting the earth-themed or the fabulous rhinestones design and the stunning overall beauty undoubtedly proves insanely hard.
The future of humanity in the designer’s view is easy to anticipate: total imminent destruction. The future part of the collection provides the chilling sensation that comes with the realization that the world as we know it has ended. The glacier themed design dominates being the perfect ending of this apocalyptic yet devastatingly beautiful collection.
Photo courtesy of Anastasia Radevich