Amsterdam-based Studio Hagel’s hub is one of those places where you walk in and really feel like breathing in creativity—together with the sound of techno blasting from behind one of the closed doors, hiding who knows what experiments. If I had to briefly introduce the work of Studio Hagel to someone who doesn’t know them, I would probably present it as a footwear design studio that designs for all kinds of brands around the world, from Valentino and Off-White to Asics and Puma, and they have gone viral with shoes like the Samba Napkin. They always strive to find aesthetic innovation, and they do that in a very playful way. But behind their work, there are many hidden stories worth telling. Let’s start from square one.

Nicole Salotti: How does this process with brands work? Are they contacting you or are you proposing ideas to the ones you like?

Mathieu Hagelaars (Founder and Footwear Designer): Well, it can go both ways. I think 90 % of the brands approach us and say “Hey, I like your work. Let’s do something”. We have created freedom in the things that we do, so they may sometimes have a loose briefing and then we can do whatever we want. But there are examples where we say, “Hey, we like your brand. We want to sit down.” And then we end up doing a project together.

Tim Nikken (Commercial Director): We love working with all kinds of different brands, from fashion brands like Valentino to contemporary sportswear brands like Asics. We work in such a way that it can be applied to any fashion brand. We are able to bring newness and create commercial success for our partners. The shoes we made for Valentino years ago are still part of their bestsellers!

NS: Alongside collaborations with brands, Studio Hagel has its own format, the Makersmonday, where they create for themselves and experiment with creativity. How would you describe it?

MH: Makersmonday is like the best way to show our creativity without boundaries, and where we can play around with shoes as much as possible, also finding their aesthetic innovation.

Imke Nijs (Footwear Designer): It is also a way for us to build our own archive of inspiration. It’s like our free space. There’s no rules. There’s no limits. We use different techniques or materials, always pushing ourselves a little bit forward. Trying it out and seeing what’s happening, switching it to new concepts, playing. Our inspiration is endless, I think mostly not footwear related, just like a whole bunch of other things and different techniques useful to push footwear also.

NS: How did this format come about?

MH: I started with that out of necessity in a way. When I started with the studio, it was just me, and I didn’t have any projects going on. So one day I was just playing with sneakers. There was the Adidas NMD City Sock and I tried to grab one, but they sold out instantly. So I decided to make it myself in a very cheesy way. People liked it. So I thought, “hey, let’s try another one.” I profiled myself as the worst sneaker collector ever. I always missed the drop and made it myself with materials that aren’t footwear-related. So a lot of double-sided tape, a lot of socks, vacuum clean hose. And Ine was the one that told me, “Ok, hey, the joke is over. You need to make your own designs and think a bit more on the concept.” She has a design academy background. I don’t have a design background, I know how to sketch. And she was the one who also taught me to sketch without pen and paper, by making.

Ine van den Elsen (Art Director): We could say that Makersmonday is a 3D sketch phase, a concept phase. Me and Mathieu were already in a relationship, he was very ambitious and I really liked how fast he was learning and sketching. We even did a little workshop where I forced him to look for inspiration from all kinds of things, and then later on pushed him a bit to start sketching in 3D and see how that works. And it took off in a good way.

IN: I always say that making a shoe is like making a doll, you have this freedom of experimenting with the materials, and the shapes. That is really the core of the studio.

NS: Some shoes born from your Makersmonday literally drove the public crazy. Even though they are not for sale, some people would do anything to get them. Have you ever thought of putting limited editions on sale?

MH: The freedom that I always had from the beginning is that it doesn’t have to be a finished product. It needs to be visually interesting, but it doesn’t need to be wearable. We’re not footwear makers, we’re footwear designers. And that also gives you a lot of creative freedom. Throughout the years we set the bar always higher and higher; and, also to challenge ourselves and to learn from that process. And we ended up with products that we never believed people would be mad about by owning a pair. For us the footwear experiments we do are more a starting point for a new design—maybe we find an interesting angle in it and it ends up in something we do actually produce, this is also how we made our own mule for example.

Plot twist: they told me about an episode involving a Makersmonday on a runway. So, for once, that had to be worn. And this time they went crazy before the public, during its realisation. This is one of the first anecdotes that made me smile because, despite everything, it fortunately had a happy ending.

ANECDOTE 01: THE RUNWAY TO THE ABYSSES

IN: We needed to create footwear for models, 25 pairs or something like that. It was a hell of a journey because we tried to make a shoe that would work in the water, giving that feeling as if it were really in the water. So we played with all kinds of experiments and materials that had never been used before, and we needed to 3D print the moulds. We turned the whole studio into a lab, we rented ovens, dry racks, all these kinds of things. The shoes needed to stay four hours in the oven and twelve hours to dry. And then, only after that time, we could know whether the process had been successful or not. And to be honest, until the last day, nothing worked. All day they were dripping all over the floor. It was nerve-racking, checking those that looked dry. We didn’t have one single pair. Because the right shoes that worked were a different colour to the left ones that worked, so they didn’t match. In the end, one day before the show, we still didn’t have any pairs. We thought at that point that we couldn’t do it anymore. It only got worse and worse. As our last chance, we called one more time the suppliers of this material, who didn’t have it anymore. But then they said like the magic word, “…we have another material that’s even easier to work with.” After two weeks of no sleep, only getting these shoes out of the ovens and the mould, we started the process again. Everyone helped us in this rush, friends, family. We created a whole organisation of people. We made 17 pairs in just like two days. When from backstage we saw them walking without ever being tested and ending up in the New York Times, Vogue, all over the internet; we couldn’t believe it. This was a beautiful example of when you have only problems and failures, but in the end by working together with this whole team, we made it walk. And they walked beautifully.

MH: We set the bar quite high for ourselves, trying to get out of our comfort zone. I always have this imposter syndrome, “I’m not sure if I can do it,” but from those kinds of projects you learn so much. And then the results, we’re talking about 2022, that’s more than two years ago, and we’re still talking about it like it was yesterday. So that’s the thing, we always need to find ourselves wondering “Okay, how can we challenge ourselves and get something exciting out there?” And, you know, this is a very extreme example, but also on the ghost designs we always come up with new products with which we are not sure to succeed. And that’s also in the way we push factories and suppliers. The whole goal is also to learn and to come up with new things, and to amaze people, in the end.

Lets jump for a moment to family affairs. As you might have deduced in the course of our conversation, besides being a team Mathieu, Ine and Imke are part of the same family. Ine introduced her cousin, Imke, to her life partner Mathieu. At that point, I asked how they decided that working together was a good idea.

IVDE: It just happened organically, the workflow works. We have the same mindset, we believe in the philosophy of the studio. So we need fewer words than working with other people. Sometimes, of course, we work with a bigger team.

ANECDOTE 02: WHEN WORKING TOGETHER (LITERALLY) HURTS

MH: It was 2020, I got approached by Nike, they wanted to do a birthday present for Neymar. I wanted to make it super high-fashion and I wanted to do something with beads. And so as we said, I knew Imke through Ine because they’re cousins, and she had a whole collection from fashion school made with also a lot of beads, so we decided to work together on this. Only one shoe had like 500 beads, way more than we expected. There was such a pressure. We had a close deadline and we worked hours late. When we got finished, I ended up at the hospital with a stomach ulcer. But the worst thing was that the pandemic arrived at that point and everything was cancelled, so he never got it. And when the pandemic ended and we could reopen, we were happy to resume the project. But he moved to Puma. So the shoe is still somewhere in the basement of Nike and nobody’s going to see it.

IN: But that’s how I started my footwear journey, so at the end it’s worth it.

I think also the way Tim landed in the studio deserves a space in these pages. He ended up at the studio via Ine too, she’s kind of the matchmaker. But the funny part of the story is his first day as an intern with Ine, many years back when he was still studying. He was helping her with a video clip for the Vengaboys for the World Cup in 2014. The concept was dancing girls and they would only film their chest, Brazilian Carnival vibe in a stylish way. His job was to take care of topless models. I can easily assume that it was his best day of work ever. Also because after that small creative episode and before working with the studio he was super corporate, working in the financial district—End of jokes. After a laugh ripped from this episode, we agreed on the power of Mathieu to collect people that you can learn from. Everybody has a specific skill and background to add to the team, and they learn from each other constantly. What did I learn in the end from this conversation? Studio Hagel is a bunch of creative minds looking each other in the eyes every day and wondering: “What the hell are we doing?” And the answer is that every time they start the process, they end up creating uniqueness.