For well over a decade now, Flavio Girolami and Prathan Poopat, two friends with a knack for making nice things, founded the brand. The pair has an enviable creative energy, and even though they spend the majority of every year on separate continents, they continue to design every collection collaboratively. Early on, they made the decision to set up production in Flavio’s native Italy, drawn in by local shoemaking saper-fare and abundance of materials. Ten years on, it’s hard to argue with the result.
"Marsèll rose to the challenge of developing its own version of the iconic sandal by Japanese brand Suicoke."
Marsèll and Suicoke are united in their drive to create everyday footwear for creative environments, with a focus on the style that has redefined the boundaries of the contemporary aesthetic statement in the last decade.
The collection will be released in a limited run of 1,000 pieces. The genderless model will be available in five different colourways and will be distributed globally from just 10 prestigious retailers.
It’s not a campaign project’ the brand explains. ‘It is supposed to convey the different atmospheres that characterised the birth of this collection.’ Marsèll discovered Lola and Pani’s pictures ‘through our own work, which involves constant research’. It’s a great fit, the couple’s work is rooted in the documentary genre but effectively traverses the fashion universe. For them ‘it’s got to be honest’ and it was precisely that that Marsèll was drawn to. While ‘observing Lola and Pani’s work, we knew that their sensitivity and delicate touch were right for our Spring Summer 2021 collection’. It had to be ‘spontaneous, authentic. The desire to be in touch with nature is a stimulus that drives us beyond confinement’, and this desire manifests itself fully through this visual story.
We see Lola and Pani balancing narrative with graphic interest. This exactly play’s into Marsèll’s concept that ‘scientific construction of the image doesn’t work for us. Deconstruction is a specific feature of the way that the brand works to develop products for its collections.’ The photographers describe how they had two approaches to making this work. One ‘much more visual and graphic, making sure that we’ve filled a frame and playing with a composition in interesting ways. But it can also be portrayed as friends hanging out.’ The narrative that comes from this ‘togetherness’ and bodies on a journey, interacting with the landscape and its elements. All this thoroughly translates the principles of the collection which were to ‘create a light, fresh and bright environment to live in.’
Marsèll