Lady Gaga loves them – but Filipino designer Kermit Tesoro’s shoes aren’t for everyone
Filipino fashion designer creates unique, funky styles using sustainable materials such as bones and resin – but his shoes may not appeal to the masses
Kermit Tesoro, a talented and handsome young fashion designer from the Philippines, is garnering a lot of international attention for his mind-blowing, avant-garde shoe features. Each shoe has its own origin and story to tell.
We caught up with Tesoro to find out what prompted him to become a shoe designer, what it means to him, and what his vision of the future as a shoe artist is.
Tesoro’s inspiration for designing bizarre shoes started as a form of curiosity, which led to him become very passionate about footwear. He decided to explore other possibilities.
“You can either be a fashion hero when you create something visually beautiful [to be] be commercially appealing, or [you can] stir people’s curiosity or even cause such disturbance by making cold-hearted designs,” he said. “It’s just fun for me.”
Success didn’t happen for Tesoro overnight. He attended two different universities to learn more about his craft. He began as a fine arts student at the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines. People there described his works as being more fashion than avant-garde because of his use of fabric as the medium and how he used the human silhouette as its frame. He also played with deconstructing clothing.
He then went on to study fashion design at the Fashion Institute of the Philippines to learn about clothing technology. “[I wanted to] learn how to construct before deconstructing. I think it was the right thing to do,” he says. “As part of it, we were asked to create a graduation collection, and that’s when I started creating my own shoes for this collection, making my theme more cohesive.”