SARAH INYOUNG PARK

Sarah Inyoung Park is a South Korean Footwear Designer based in London. Her work revolves around the ideas of personal identity and cultural diversity, reflecting on her life journey through different places worldwide: Seoul - South Korea, NSW - Australia, Florence - Italy, Hong Kong, and now London - England.

Sarah studied at Seoul Yewon Art middle school before she moved to Australia at the age of 14. During her stay in Australia, she continued to practice pop and surrealism art.

For her BA study, she moved to Italy to pursue a career in Footwear Design, studying at Polimoda Institute from 2011 to 2015. It was an eye-opening experience for her after Australia. She had faced a lot of cultural and language barriers that she believes, have helped shape who she is today.

Since Polimoda, she has worked for 3 years + within the Fashion and Footwear industry from luxury brand Ferragamo HK as an editorial intern to SME footwear brands and as a footwear designer for a start-up company in Seoul.

Having witnessed the mass production of footwear and global sourcing, she aims to localise production processes by combining craft and digital technologies through her own Micro Manufacturing System.

After studying Footwear Design in Italy and working as a designer for a number of years in Seoul, I realized traditional footwear manufacturing can be remarkably inefficient in regards to its overall process - from prototyping to sourcing materials. I have explored a localized approach to footwear production, adopting advanced technologies to customize my own manufacturing method which can be suitable for in-house or micro-manufacturing environments.

My collection uses a blend of both handmade and digital production methods - using advanced digital software to design and print my own lasts and outsoles to assembly the separate parts of shoes together - All styles are made on my unique shoe last, based on the varying foot shapes of 8 close friends from different backgrounds.

Last but not least, each element of my shoes and the whole collection represents my personal identity and multicultural background from last to sole.