The idea for Sloafer, ballerinas with sole, came to Lucy Herron and her husband Mike when they were faced with a personal fashion dilemma.
“We’d always wanted to have our own business and build something for our family, but let me say right now, shoes were not what I imagined. I’m not a shoe or handbag girl, so if you’d told me this ten years ago I’d have laughed! We were in Italy while I was pregnant with Jack, my eldest, and I was so uncomfortable. I am a ballet pump fan, Mike a sneaker fan. Just a few months earlier for my birthday, he’d given me a pair of ‘ballet sneakers’ to give me the comfort I needed in a style I loved. I feel awful saying I hated them; but they were ugly and uncomfortable. I think he was a bit annoyed when he asked me how my shoes were at the end of our first day walking round cobbled streets and up to the top of towers, and I said, “not great”! It spurred him on and fast forwarding over some detail, we put his sneaker sole on a ballerina pump and a little while later held our first prototype in our hands.
Sloafer; BALLERINAS WITH SOLE launched in August 2018. Our 1cm sneaker sole gives you all day comfort but without taking away from the elegance of a ballet pump. If you’re always on your feet, you shouldn’t have to feel the ground through your shoes.
Sloafer is my second project; my first and longest standing love pre-dating husband and kids is a charity, Msizi Africa which I started 15 years ago. We feed orphans in Lesotho. We made a big change last year due to a drop in donations because of the pandemic. We invested the little money we had in the bank, in building up a herd of dairy cows so we can phase ourselves out and food for the children can be purchased with money raised from the sale of milk from our cows. By the end of 2023 we aim for this project to be sustainable so the community is feeding their own children. We will leave, at that point.
Recently, I read Consumed by Aja Barber. I was left with a really unsettling feeling that my two very different worlds had collided. My days can be a little strange at the best of times; one WhatsApp to my agent to approve a sample, and another to my Country Director about paperwork to get a new cow across the border from South Africa.
Cleaning up the fashion world one step at a time
The ‘fashion world’ I’m part of is destroying the continent I view as ‘home’ and is responsible for the continued vicious circle of poverty. But a deeper dive thanks to this book showed me that the fashion world has largely only been enabled because of slavery and our Colonial past. Not a topic to raise if you want to keep the tone light, but I cannot ignore it given my family in the Global South. I guess until then, I didn’t have a take on ‘sustainability’ other than I believe it’s a buzz word that people throw around without understanding it. But it made me realise that while I can change my spending habits and not bulk buy cheap t-shirts that the kids destroy at school, it gave me a sense that Sloafer really is on the right track.
Fair pay for quality labour
We produce our shoes in the Global North, in a factory I have visited many times and one that is safe and pays its staff a good wage. We have limited numbers of styles and we don’t have seasonal collections. I make new colours when I, and I think you, fancy a change and when I’m running low on stock. We have no waste. Our products never go on sale; they’re well made, they’re not cheap, and they last. I keep them on my website until every last pair is gone. While you can have a pair in every colour, you can’t ‘over consume.’ The Sloafers I wear every day are the same pairs I got out of the box from my first order nearly four years ago. We have recently just decided to do one of the only things we can do, and that is to stop producing free tote bags that we send you with every purchase. They are anything but ‘free’ given the cost to someone else who has made them.
I get the greatest buzz when my phone pings with an order, and when I read a really lovely review from a customer. So head to our website www.sloafer.com and don’t just take our word for it, take theirs!
“Beautiful shoes! The perfect option for style and comfort – always get asked where they are from! Beautifully made and can wear all day with no issues, can’t recommend enough!”
Follow us on Instagram at @SloaferOfficial and look at our website www.sloafer.com – I’m always happy to have a chat about sizing or fit, so my email address is lucy@sloafer.com.
Claim your Darling reader discount of 5% by quoting ‘DARLING’ when you order or contact Sloafer.
We would love to have you Sloafing so do pop me a line!
You may also enjoy reading about Our spring and summer fashion edit
