Filling Pieces

Every so often a new brand emerges in the street wear community that makes people sit up and notice straight away and even rarer some times a brand will appear that make people change the way they are thinking of their own designs. Usually the brand would be a tee shirt brand or at a push some one with a complete cut and sew line, but very rarely does it come in the form of a new footwear brand.

Now I know that you could argue that a brand like Gourment did this a few years ago but I would like to counter and say they Gourmet built it's brand on taking other peoples designs and re-contextualised for the modern environment, so instead of making people re think their designs they shown what could be done in a sampling and remixing vain, which is an art in it self and has made them successful but it isn't quite the same as changing the way people think about footwear.

When you look at a Filling Pieces shoe you could be forgiven to think that the brand is old and it has years of silhouettes to back it up, so you might be surprised to hear that it was only formed in 2009 in the every popular Dutch city of Amsterdam.

The designer Guillaume Philibert introduced the brand to fill the gaps in between the traditional sports wear sneaker market and the emerging high end fashion house sneaker market, think of the gap between the Nike Air 180 and Rick Owens Geobaskets, It is the gap between the £100 training shoe and the £500 couture sneaker.

Filling Pieces is here to give you the functionality of the Nike trainer but the build quality of the Rick Owens Geobasket and for a price which is achievable for the average clothing enthusiast.

This is a trick that so far Filling Pieces have managed to pull of perfectly and I feel that this is part of their great success, the consumer can instantly tell that they have got a lot of shoe for their money and that the level of care that it takes to produces such shoes can not be achieved in one of the huge South East Asian factories where so many of our sneakers are made, you get that hand made Italian feel for a price you don't mind paying.

For such a new brand it is good to see that Filling Pieces they take their impact on the world seriously and that when they use part of a communities assets they are will to not only compensate them but they work to help improve their position in life.

This is evident in the FP for charity program that Filling Pieces have set up after their recent look book shoot in Surinam. They have started to work along side Care4share and helped to get shoes on the feet over 50 boys from a local orphanage.

Whilst other shoe companies are squeezing the life out of the developing world by only looking at their profit margins, Filling Pieces are doing their up most to help the people they come in contact with, this alone is why it is worth given this brand a look. It is rare thing when something that looks so good has a heart as well, it is a win win situation for the consumer, the brand and the people that produce and help market their shoes with their incredible environments.

From the first moment that you pick up a shoe produced by Fill Pieces you know that you are in for a treat, the attention to detail and the design work that goes in to each model is incredible. From the way the leather has been laser cut to perfection to the soft leather lining which is more often seen on high dress shoes, each sneaker oozes quality.

On the design front Filling Pieces pushed the boundaries with the way their tongue creeps up the front of the shoe giving each silhouette an instantly recognisable trademark which gives them away as a Filling Pieces shoe. This shows the lengths the company is willing to go to make their own space in a crowded market and it show the daring of such a new company, this is a breath of fresh air and something that a lot of companies could learn from.

The use of leathers and the leathers that are chosen are exquisite and the colour pallets of each collection are not just thrown together, you can tell that there is inspiration and research behind each choice. This is not a brand that wants to fly in to the market make some quick money and fly out, this is a brand that wants to be here in a hundred years and one that wants to influence the market it works in and others beyond it.

Now if there is one person who is red hot at the moment it is Ronnie Fieg owner of New York's premier sneaker spot. He has been at the head of some of last years hottest trainer collaborations and with the whole world lining up for his releases it is good to see that he has turned his hand to a pair of Filling Pieces ( in fact at the time of this going to press the colab has instantly sold out online ).

Like all Filling Pieces the shoe he has added his touch to has been hand made in Portugal and it comes in all black with quilted panels. The shoe has been crafted out of glorious leather and lined with the same soft tan leather that adorns most pairs of Filling Pieces.

We are sure that you will be seeing these shoes on ebay going for silly prices and like everything Kith these shoes will be reblogged all over the world a million times, whilst I don't agree with the re selling hype these shoes sure stand up to the attention that they are getting.

Having just started with a few accounts just a couple of years ago Filling Pieces are now in some of the best retail spot world wide and they have made them selves a perfect accompaniment to so many other fashion houses.

Because of their wide reach and all encompassing designs they can be seen in niche street wear stores to large department shores and then to high end boutiques, everybody has taken them on board and treated them as a contemporary.

This goes along way in proving what a great brand Filling Pieces is, and how the vision of the people behind it is universal in the way they cleverly think out designs and take responsibility in the product that they are producing.

Some of the shops they now sell in.

• Pauw Mannen LUXURY DENIM Amsterdam

• Selfridges London

• BlackRainbow Paris

• Pilot presents Netclothing.Net Leicester

• Excellent Goods Building Tokyo

as well as many more, these are just a few examples to show the variety of shops that Filling pieces fit in to comfortably and as you can see they are all over the world and they are shops of different sizes and out looks. One thing they have in common though is the appreciation of high quality items and they like to stock brand that offer a little more than just the product they produce.