Six years ago, Philéo Landowski didn’t know the first thing about making a shoe.
Now, he’s established himself as a footwear designer with his own label, a Comme des Garçons collaboration and a host of hookups with major sports specialists.
During Paris Fashion Week, he is also showing “Avalanche,” a site-specific collaboration with Japanese installation artist Tadashi Kawamata in the courtyard of Dover Street Market Paris, a project supported by Adidas.
“This brand has been my school, both in terms of understanding what I want in terms of design but also in how to speak with suppliers, craftspeople and even the designers I now work with,’ said the 22-year-old designer.
That said, things started pretty strong for his eponymous brand which made its formal debut in 2020 at Comme des Garçons’ Trading Museum in Paris.
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A long-time sneakerhead, Landowski wanted to make his own, being as sustainable as possible, with retro-inflected chunky styles that played on textures and material mixes.
“What interests me in a shoe is its interaction with a space, and the artistic aspect of it,” he said. “But you can’t forget that it’s a product at the end and there’s biomechanical engineering at play.”
Launched thanks to an initial 15,000-euro bank loan, the brand broke even from its first commercial season.
“After that, there were so many layers that built on top as I started wanting to work on structure, which is something I understood over time,” he recalls.
The unisex line, which ranges from French size 36 to 45 (or the U.S. equivalent to a women’s size 5 and up to a men’s 11), soon included derbies and mary-jane style shoes.
Soon enough, the designer was recruited in 2021 by outdoor specialist Salomon, becoming creative consultant working on its “sportstyle” design lines and artistic direction.
All this allowed Landowski the luxury of growing at its own pace, he said.
Landowski set up a gallery on Rue des Grands Augustins, in the heart of the artistic Saint-Germain-des-Prés area. This might be an unconventional choice for an edgy emerging label, but Landowski confessed a particular attachment to the area.
“My grandfather owned an art bookshop in the 6th arrondissement, which is where I met [artist] Katerina Jebb who then introduced me to [Dover Street Market chief executive officer and Comme des Garçons International president] Adrian Joffe,” he said.
“I also found it pretty great to be so close to art galleries like Kamel Mennour and telling myself that if I wanted a breather, I could go spend an hour in front of [works by] Anish Kapoor or Kawamata,” he continued.
“There are plenty of small moments but there’s never a time where it clicked,” he said. “I don’t think that exists, to be honest. It’s a myth and that’s a good thing because [a brand] is made of all these moments.”
Even so, there’s one he’s not likely to forget: meeting Rei Kawakubo in 2022.
“I was starstuck,” he said. “Comme des Garçons is the pinnacle of what you can do in terms of fashion, one of the first brands that really marked my aesthetic with the fact that it could be entirely different from one season to the next and yet have this entirely refined DNA and this rigorous thoroughness in creation.”
Although he demurred on details, this spring 2023 encounter led making footwear for Comme des Garçons, including a derby with an XXL sole spreading outwards on the fall 2024 runway.
When Adidas came calling, he floated the idea of an installation to mark the opening of Dover Street Market Paris in the spring of 2024. “I wanted a real artistic intervention and not just a meaningless happening,” he said. “I contacted Kamel [Mennour] and asked him if working with Tadashi [Kawamata] – and it just happened.”
With it comes an Adidas Superstar 82 in leather that has been reworked with a hand-painted leather patina in black that will retail exclusively at Dover Street Market Paris from Thursday.
Ten seasons in, the Phileo brand is now distributed in 14 countries with close to 40 doors, including Kith and of course, Dover Street Market Paris – the brand is also in its showroom program – as well as the retail emporium’s London, Ginza, New York City and Los Angeles doors.
Europe remains the largest market for the label, accounting for over 40 percent of sales but Japan and the U.S. are also major contributors, at roughly 20 percent each.
It’s a restrained footprint but one that feels healthy, he said. “The mistake we made at the beginning was opening [wholesale] accounts too easily,” he added.
There are some 3,000 pairs, spanning around 30 references across 15 designs, that come out of the family-owned factory based in Portugal Landowski has been working since the beginning.
The Paris-based designer has also started collaborating with fashion labels such as Rokh, Kidill and Louis Gabriel Nouchi, among those he can name.
It’s a process he particularly enjoys. “I need to work with other creatives around me, be influenced by people because I feel it ultimately gives a lot of depth to the product.”
For fall 2024, he also introduced the Phileo Artisanal line, a more formal offering where he wants full creative freedom.
“I wanted to push further on this idea of being sustainable and durability placed at the heart of creation,” he said.
In addition to commercial success, he’s also garnered attention from the French Ministry of Culture, which awarded him a bursary over the summer, and won the accessories prize of the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris, awarded in September.
For the designer, the next step is solidifying the business.
“It’s held its own since the beginning and that’s great,” he said. “But now, it’s about being able to earn a living from it one day but at least continue to develop, to create and make it steady on the long run. For me, that’s more important than trying to make it into some kind of one-hit wonder that would make no sense.”
