CELINE Colorful Shoes, Mysterious Hand-Made Shoemaking Technology [Picture And Text]

Interlaced multicolored leather stripes with super heels, as well as those with no recognition, CELINE's Opanka sandals are at the forefront of the 2008 spring and summer trend.

This uniquely designed shoe is chic and stylish and incorporates elements of the sport, inspired by the first pair of sandals worn by early Europeans.

Since the 2006-2007 autumn and winter, CELINE creative director Ivana Omazic has been keen to integrate her ancestors' style into the shoes that she wears everyday, so as to pay tribute to her motherland.

The first season is the high heels. The second season is short boots and high heels. The young Croatia creative director succeeds in endowing Opanka with a luxurious and stylish style while continuing its long manufacturing process and tradition.

Reports from CELINE workshop in Italy.

If Venice is known to the world for its distinctive palaces, architecture and climate, La Serenissima is highly respected by luxury experts for its professional leather and footwear technology.

On the banks of Padova, the CELINE workshop is trying to turn all the new ideas of Ivana Omazic into shoe design into reality.

Every season, hundreds of sketches are interpreted, moulds and models are produced, and, without violating the important principles of ensuring the comfort of shoemaking, it is as close as possible to the manuscripts of creative directors.

In order to perfect every pair of shoes, it is difficult to count the samples and time.

For the Opanka model, the whole production process becomes more complex, because soles are a key part of shoe design.

Even before thinking about every season's vamp, you must first use traditional methods to make sole.

Opanka sole is made from top glossy leather.

Craftsmen in the vicinity of Bologna still have the technology of making skins into perfect leather.

The quality of tanning is very critical because it determines the success of Opanka soles.

The thickness of the sole will be systematically controlled between 4 and 5 millimeters before any minor machining starts.

The manufacturing process of Opanka sole includes the following 5 steps:

First, soak the leather in water for 60 to 90 minutes.

Next, put it outside for 24 hours of partial drying.

After that, the heat Union gives Opanka sole unique shape.

The leather which is still slightly wet is put into the press tool one by one. The rubber model and the aluminum pressure plate used in the press are different from each half of the shoe size.

In the process of hot pressing, the pressure plate relaxes the leather fiber to a certain extent and is then pressed into the model, thus creating the unique shape of the Opanka sole.

The final drying process outside the mold is usually followed for several days.

The last step is cutting: the soles are made according to the rough machining made by the craftsmen in advance, so as to achieve the height of the shoe edges selected in the design of Ivana Omazic.

After that, an inner sole may have 1.5 soles to be added to the interior. The Opanka soles are painstakingly drawn by hand according to traditional methods.

In the adjacent workshops, stylists are responsible for creating future shoes.

The stereotyped shoe mold will first be digitalized and recorded.

Its dimensions, components, holes and all details are stored and pformed into styles.

A simple design may have up to 35 different kinds of leather inlays and more than ten kinds of shoes.

This is the actual situation of color sandals this season.

The sandals are elaborately made of eight different kinds of lacquer and a variety of open lines.

For each piece of leather, the tailoring is the first step, first separated according to its thickness and then thinned along the edge.

After being reinforced with an inner lining, the leather forms the upper part of the shoe, that is, the upper.

Next, each leather is cut into a final shape again, using a tool connected to the computer software, and its accuracy reaches millimeter.

The computer records the production process and helps the craftsmen to do assembly work, especially for different leather interlacing.

After that, the whole piece of leather will be expanded on the three-dimensional foot model, called "modeling".

Reduce the extra thickness by stitching and polishing: assembling a shoe is like creating a puzzle.

The assembled parts are first connected to the first sole and then put into the sole of the Opanka.

Another peculiarity of Opanka is that its vamp is sewn on the edges of the upper and the shoe with a bright and clear thread in a riding nail.

This is the sign of the pure Opanka sole.

Then add the heel and print the CELINE logo on the sole.

The last pair of shoes were repeatedly checked, including even the smallest details and stitches, polished, and then wrapped in paper.

In the three weeks from the production of Opanka sole model to the delivery of finished products to more than 130 specialized shops in CELINE, nearly a hundred craftsmen devoted much effort to this hand-made shoe with distinctive sole.