In profile: Sneaker artist Helen Kirkum
With her unique method of deconstructing sneakers and handcrafting them into new pairs, London-based designer Helen Kirkum is starting important conversations in the footwear industry.
This story appears in issue 3 of OFF Magazine – On’s annual print magazine exploring movement, design and sustainability.
Words by Lucy Thorpe. Photography by Wendy Huynh.
For someone whose goal is to prevent every shoe from ending up in landfill, Helen Kirkum is surprisingly optimistic. “In this space, you have to have a positive mindset because otherwise, it's all a bit overwhelming,” she laughs. “If I think too deeply about the enormity of what I'm trying to achieve, it can overwhelm me. So I just have to get on with it and do my best."
Helen is frequently pigeonholed as a “sustainable” designer, but it's a term she avoids because, she explains, “it means everything and nothing at the same time”. Her practice simply combines what she loves – architecture, art, fashion, product design and “a good bit of old material”.
Helen and I are sitting in one of the few shaded corners of her sun-flooded studio in London's newly opened Design District. Nestled on the South Bank of the River Thames, the architecturally striking network of buildings is London’s new creative epicenter. “My first studio was underneath the railway arches, and it did have one window, but it faced a brick wall. Now look how many windows I've got,” she says, gesturing to the floor-to-ceiling windows spanning two walls. “I'm measuring my success on how many windows I have.”
Glancing around the studio, it's clear that panoramic windows aren't the only testament to Helen's success. A shelf displaying a selection of her past collaborations with Asics, Casely-Hayford, Melissa and Reebok cover the back wall. Stacked underneath are intriguing piles of materials for her forthcoming London Fashion Week show. To our right lie freshly printed posters commissioned by the Vitra Design Museum and some mysterious shoe lasts she can't yet talk about. Arranged on the central worktop are the sneaker sculptures she made for issue 3 of OFF Magazine.
With so many accolades to her name, it's hard to believe that Helen graduated from the London Royal College of Art only six years ago. During those formative years, she began applying the traditional methods of shoemaking she'd learned during her BA at university in Northampton, once the British footwear mecca, to make sneakers from waste. Using recycled materials is common practice in fashion and footwear today, but making a shoe solely from refuse seemed radical at the time. “In the beginning, people definitely didn't really take what I was doing seriously, or they didn't understand it. The main feedback I used to get was, ‘Why don't you use the old materials as an inspiration to make a new shoe? Or get some leather and make it look old?’ I was like, ‘It's not the point; it's about the old shoes.’ I had to stick to my guns, which was quite hard at times.”
Not everyone felt that way, and after graduating, Adidas approached the promising young designer for a junior design role. While a great learning experience, working in-house ultimately made Helen face the growing realization that she needed to pursue her vision independently, even if she wasn't entirely sure what that would mean.
”I thought, if I don't cut and run now, I will never do it. So I just quit while I was ahead. I was off back to London with no plan.”
Before she could pursue her own project, Adidas offered Kirkum a position in the US that she couldn't refuse. She boarded a flight and spent the following year working alongside some of the most influential minds in the field. Upon returning in 2019, she established her eponymous studio.
“At the beginning, a lot of brands were inspired by our aesthetic,” she admits when asked about the challenges of starting out as an independent designer. “If I'd had this interview three years ago, I probably would've been less positive. But it lit a fire under me. Because when I saw brands taking the aesthetic of what we do but not the meaning behind it, I thought, ‘Helen, you need to take ownership of this idea and you have to put it out in the world in the way that it was supposed to be perceived.’”
She quickly established herself as a master of her craft and, before long, had amassed an impressive list of clients and collaborators ranging from sneaker brands and fashion designers to museums and even household-name celebrities. What sets Helen’s work apart is her ability to tell stories, which happens naturally as she stitches together the memories of each piece of fabric, tying together the past and present of the designers and wearers.
Everything she creates is handcrafted, so there is a natural limit to the number of pairs she can produce, and, consequently, a long waiting list for her Voyage and Legacy made-to-order sneakers. Voyage sneakers are made using shoes rescued from recycling centers, while Legacy pairs are created bespoke from up to six pairs of the customer's shoes. Commissioning the latter requires a high level of trust, as customers are often deeply attached to the pairs they send to be deconstructed. “I take it very seriously,” Helen explains.
“It is important to people, and I want to do their story justice in the product. We want to give them something that no one else in the world has.”
This passion for craft underpins everything that carries the Helen Kirkum name. Alongside sneakers, Helen also offers mentoring, classes, and sneaker sculpture workshops as avenues to pass on her wisdom to others and take her one step closer to her goal of preventing sneakers from ending up in landfill. “I'm very aware that our made-to-order sneakers are at a pretty high price point, so they're not accessible for everyone. That's why we try to educate on how to recycle shoes or how to look after products. It's equally important to me to get that side of things across.”
The sneaker sculpture classes follow Helen's design ethos of "making through doing", a method that forgoes sketching and digitally rendering designs in favor of a more organic and spontaneous approach. “The sneaker sculpture premise is to take nothing and make something creative out of it. It's a very easy tool to make people understand my process in a nutshell, and it shows people that playful side of design, but also how much you can utilize waste materials to make cool stuff.”
For this issue of OFF, she's cut and collaged cereal boxes, magazines, pieces of string and bottle caps into six sneaker sculptures that encapsulate the experience and emotions of running a marathon. One sleek, streamlined sculpture features red laces and details, evoking a sense of speed. On another, three green bottle caps embellish a cardboard tongue – a nod to first, second, and third place prizes. Nature, ambition, progress, and goals inspired the remaining four sculptures.
As we ponder the concept of marathons and the perseverance and determination required to run such a distance, it's hard not to draw parallels with the tenacity it's taken Helen to get to where she is today. There have been moments when she's become overwhelmed by the state of the world and contemplated giving up. “It made me think pack up the studio, there's no point doing this, let's just make nothing,” she says. But she pushed past it and kept her eye set on the greater goal.
“I like to think that we're inspiring people and changing mindsets, and that's bigger than me, than what we're doing. I can feel the energy of what we're doing is important, and I'm ready to go for it.”
She pauses, looking across at the sneaker sculptures bathed in light on the central worktop. “I feel I'm in a good place to do that."
This article is from issue 3 of OFF Magazine, which features exclusive interviews with a range of artists and athletes, including Roger Federer. Grab your copy now.
