Emerging Hungarian designer Julia Káldy has risen to popularity with a much acclaimed and praiseworthy collection which has seen her graduating with honors in 2011 from Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design (MOME) in Budapest.
Káldy's signature design trait is a sculptural approach to shoe design, with an aim to confer an aura of timelessness to each creation while still keeping check on current trends.
The collection incorporating the essence of her work, her thesis project for which she was awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Design Award, is called Unibody. Unibody is an experimental creation investigating how the silhouette of the leg changes depending on the shoe and its form. Originally a work called Urban Oasis conceived in Copenhagen during her experience at the Royal Danish Design Academy, it evolved to culminate into a nine-pair collection ranging from flat wearable street shoes to intricate objects dominating the female figure and sculpting the legs accordingly. The Caucasian, flesh-colored tone for the leather material of the shoes was chosen in accord with Káldy's view of the human body as an uncut silhouette which footwear harmonically complements, invisible.This way the shoes appear to merge with the rest of the body and morph the leg so as to create disparate shapes according to their particular design, height and overall volume.
While her current challenging objective would be to bring forward her own name and brand, Káldy, making use of Unibody as her cover letter, Julia has in the meantime gotten involved in interesting collaborations and projects. Her shoe collection for fashion designer Eleanor Amoroso made the catwalks of London Fashion Week last year and rising music starlet Zola Jesus has shown interest in her work, which has led to the creation of an ad-hoc made capsule collection.
All these different works are essentially variations on a theme gravitating around the initial unique idea and vision underpinning Unibody. Raw wood wedge trapped by straps and layers of leather, coming in different shapes and colors, ranging from the black notes of the Amoroso collaboration to the captivating fluo light blues of the latest photoshoot of her pairing with Dóri Tomcsányi. In a nutshell: simplicity and minimalism, as per influence of her Scandinavian sojourn, with some carefully chosen, surprising, details so as to confer an adequate degree of dynamics to the shoe-sculpture object.
Aug. 7, 2012
Strate College
Pforzheim University
Parsons
Design Academy Eindhoven
LOFT 42
Red Dot design award
