Salmon is the main contributor to Norwegian seafood exports. In 2023, Norway exported 1.2 million tonnes of salmon! This means that there’s also a lot of salmon skin available, but so far there are only a few companies turning it into material for a value chain.

The clothing brand Fogg Gildeskål saw the potential for a footwear colab, and teamed up with Kastel as the established shoe brand with expertise, Norskin as the material producer, and myself as the shoe designer.

This project has been put on hold, due to the lack of finances for getting it through to production. We don’t usually share work in progress, but decided to make an exception. The finale design will look different, and hopefully reach the market some day.

Here is a peek into my studio when busy, and my hans-on design process. Working with materials and assembling several prototypes, is teaching me a lot about how materials behaves, and how it can work in production of several pairs in different sizes. We have also been testing seaweed based foam from Agoprene as padding material, and visited ‘Salmon Centre Gildeskål.

In the prosess there is also a lot of experimentation and and design ideas not being considered for development, but gives direction in -ways of thinking.