This sandal started with an idea of making as minimal a strap as possible that would still hold the foot in place and not allow any slop motion of the shoe. As with all of SOLE’s footwear, the platform was based on the original Flip, with a deep heel cup, wear mouldable footbed, high arches and metatarsal and a hidden toe ridge.
I made the first prototype by cutting the straps off an existing SOLE Flip and screwing some hand-sewn straps in place. After a few modifications the strap performed well and moved into the more aesthetic design phase. A few factory samples were done where we tried out different materials for different target markets and also made a narrower-strapped women’s version.
Along the way, Haglofs also made a version of this design, but they added a toe cap and made 3 versions of the basic strap pattern. Haglofs licensed the platform design from SOLE and were using SOLE footbeds in all of their footwear.
This shoe will be available in Spring 2014.
