Garance Vallée, a Parisian artist



Artist, designer, object and scenographer, at only 27 years old she has already proven herself in many disciplines. A few months ago Nike contacted her to revisit a pair of Blazers in her image. She has built a world of her own by surfing different artistic fields after her architecture studies and an enriching New York stay.
"It's a super protean universe, I work on instinct. When I meet the material or when I meet the color, I immediately perceive an emotion and I try to transcribe it as much as possible. These are not very streamlined things, I like that we see the gesture, the material on the objects, that we feel the whole process behind it, "she says in an interview at Views.

It was recently the turn of the Paraboot brand to call on Garance, offering her to revisit the Chambord model.



The Paraboot brand was born in Izeaux, a village in the Isère region with about twenty shoe factories, Rémy-Alexis Richard, the founder first worked at Chevron as a worker-cutter. In 1927, he registered the name Paraboot, a combination of "Para", an Amazonian port from which latex is exported, and "boot", the curious shoe, which he discovered in the United StatesRich with its shoemaking know-how, Paraboot has been offering elegantly designed shoes made of full-grain calf leather for over 100 years.
Made in France, Paraboot shoes display a special authenticity that will appeal to lovers of beautiful pieces with character. The Michaël shoes are inspired by a brown palette: smooth brown leather contrasted by a dark brown gum sole. An original model mixing the modernity of a derby with the chic of a moccasin. Then it's up to the Chambord model to become the icon of the house, in smooth leather, lacquered platform derbies, round lace-up lacing with 5 eyelets, leather lining, goodyear stitching, natural gum sole.


The artist then appropriated the timeless city pair of derbies and transposed it into a model that could accompany her in all her daily activities and peregrinations, right down to work in the studio. Merging the territories of architecture, art and design, she approaches this pair through its materiality and volumes to create new organic lines and games of curves and counter-curves.


Assembling leather pieces of different hues and grains, she creates harmony from the earthy and natural chromatics that run through all of her paintings, like a true extension of her pictorial universe. With a refined style, the Chambord metamorphoses into a patchwork of leather inserts that form a living body, a second skin destined to adapt to all our movements and contemporary lifestyles.


Garance Vallée depicts the story of this collaboration through pretty words:

"For this collaboration I looked for a shoe model that could follow my lifestyle between city and work in the studio.
This pair I build with
This pair I deconstruct with
This pair I sculpt with
This pair I dance with
This pair I think with
This pair I go out late with
This pair I walk my city with
This pair I paint with.

The Chambord, a derby that is both urban, but with a golf style, hybrid, timeless, thus crossing backgrounds, worlds, lifestyles. As in my art, I try to create bridges between disciplines, to merge the territories of architecture, art and design to explore new relationships between man, his body and space.

A pair with organic lines as if giving movement to it, making it alive. I wanted the object to become the subject.The idea comes from a gesture. An uncontrolled gesture. From a beautiful accident.That of the drop of paint that falls on the shoe, that spreads, that forms an unexpected spot of color on my foot. The idea is there. A movement frozen in time.From an uncontrolled gesture comes a delineated form."


At L'Exception we are particularly fond of this kind of collaboration, when young artists/designers are honored to showcase their art, while respecting the environmental charter. The idea of combining works of art with the world of fashion has always been significant.

Garance is an artist in her own right with a beautiful universe populated with many references.


To get this original pair of Derbies