Meet the Designer Turning Traditional Footwear Into Conceptual Chaos
About half of the combat boots in the latest COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS show were what you’d expect: Rugged, bulky, and crafted from black or oxblood leather. The other half were not: The chunky soles formed a sharp right angle, making the toeboxes point up into the sky and the leather buckle under the pressure of their dramatic shape.
Even by the fiercely inventive standards of CDG, it was quite the statement. The Japanese fashion house has been pushing the boundaries of wearable fashion for over fifty years, up-ending expectations and creating instantly viral moments. These shoes did exactly that, igniting a social media stir as soon as they hit the runway — but they weren’t solely the work of CDG. For the past few seasons, the brand’s founder Rei Kawakubo has been outsourcing her most outlandish footwear designs to KIDS LOVE GAITE, a little-known Japanese shoemaker.
“I was really touched. There were 35 looks in the show, and every one was wearing my shoes, so I was crying, just crying the whole time,” says Shintaro Yamamoto, founder of KIDS LOVE GAITE, when I called him at his Tokyo studio to hear about how the unconventional boots I’d just seen stomp down the runway in Paris. For Yamamoto, it was the biggest moment for his brand since it launched in 2008. Yes, there have been many CDG creations before this, alongside collaborations with everyone from famed British shoemaker Clarks to Japanese retail giant BEAMS, but this felt like a defining moment.
Yamamoto starts to tell me about wanting to break the conventional form of a combat boot, but I’m struggling to concentrate. Over zoom, my gaze is transfixed on the boot beside him, resting on a shelf in a peculiar way: Turned 90 degrees, it is balancing on its L-shaped toebox, its heeled sole standing bolt upright. This is a chunky military boot, a heavy traditional leather shoe, and somehow, its tall shaft is hovering above a nondescript white shelf, assisted only by its unique construction. (Think of the shock you had when you first saw Michael Jackson perform his gravity-defying forward-leaning dance move, and you’re pretty close to my surprise at seeing this boot stand toe-first.)
You’d be forgiven, having only seen the boots in this precariously upturned state, for thinking they were a weird experimental gimmick made for the sake of weird experimentation. They are, in fact, shoes with an important message. Titled “To hell with war”, CDG HOMME PLUS’ FW25 collection was a protest in the form of reimagined military garb, flower-ornamented metal hats or khaki green officers uniforms with an excess of brass buttons, and Yamamoto’s upturned (or, as he calls them, broken) shoes were a part of this anti-war statement.
This has become a big part of Yamamoto’s business: Designers come to him for footwear to match the theme of their show or brand. And he rejects the advances of many: “Sometimes brands think it's easy to make shoes, but it's not,” says Yamamoto. “I have to like their creations and we [have to] respect each other, otherwise I won’t make shoes for them.”
His convention-crushing dress shoes have made him the go-to designer for many of Japan’s most experimental brands, including more niche names like the punk-inspired KIDILL or craft-focused fashion label The Viridi-anne. KIDS LOVE GAITE has built a devoted following amongst those looking for outlandish footwear with an artisan's touch.
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A few days after the CDG show, still at Paris Fashion Week, another KIDS LOVE GAITE design emerged, this time on doublet’s villain-themed FW25 runway: Black leather derbies handmade with a zip-up opening at the front revealing a red cartoon mouth, with zipper teeth. As Yamamoto holds the shoe up, its “upper lip” bounces up and down.
The 50-year-old designer is wearing a black bomber jacket, a silver chain with a lighter on the end, thick black glasses, and a distinctive style of pointy chin-strapped beard. Behind him are two posters — one featuring artists Gilbert & George, the other The Sex Pistols — but practically everywhere else are new season shoes, they’re stacked on white metal shelves covering an entire wall or lined up along the tops of tables.
He’s in his office turned temporary Fall/Winter 2025 showroom and has been busy with admin, processing orders from customers. It’s his least favorite part of running a brand (he’d much rather be at the workshop, an hour outside of Tokyo, handcrafting his next designs with the two shoemakers he works with), but it's a necessary one. And with the fruits of his labor all around, he’s soon plucking more shoes off his well-stocked shelves.
There is his latest in-line collection, orange and black colored in honor of MA-1 jackets, like the one he’s wearing. Yamamoto is particularly fond of a few pairs: Brogues with wrinkled fabric created by hand using a steamer, boots where a large portion of the leather is cut away by hand, revealing its bright orange inner, and his orange-lined, bulbous-toed Walt model — “I was inspired by Dr. Martens' steel toe derbies and Mickey Mouse,” he says of its shape.
Then, as he turns to unveil another set of shelves, more collaborations: Past CDG creations, double-headed designs or brogues where the midsole extends far beyond the shoe, alongside chukka boots with TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist. decorated either through British flags or skeleton-like toes.
The full scale of Yamamoto’s creativity is on view here — “I like making ordinary shoes, but I like making outstanding shoes too,” he replies when quizzed on the varying degrees of weirdness in his designs — from classic preppy brogues to that teeth-wielding, cartoonish collaboration. And it’s all grounded by old-school shoemaking practices, exclusively using leather and often with handmade detailing.
Amongst the humdrum of mass-produced modern footwear, it’s rare to find this kind of crafty experimentation. It’s something that comes, partly, from Yamamoto’s biggest inspiration,the avant-garde shoemaker John Moore, known for his punk-infused leather footwear and collaborations with Vivienne Westwood. “I always get inspiration from John Moore's designs,” he says, rounding out one of many discussions about the English shoemaker in our hour-long chat.
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Aged 15, Yamamoto was sent to a boarding school in Devon, England — “It was a nice place, but it was boring,” he says — and after dropping out, found himself in London in the early ‘90s, studying at Camberwell College of Arts. Through mutual friends, he began helping designer Daita Kimura open a store named The Old Curiosity Shop.
I like making ordinary shoes, but I like making outstanding shoes too.
Yamamoto estimates he was around 17 by this point. He first helped through DIY — painting and putting up shelves — and then, once the shop opened, he was taught shoemaking.
Kimura learned his art directly from John Moore and his closest collaborator Ian Reid, having worked as Reid’s apprentice. And now with his own store, he kept to the principles established by the duo, handmaking everything using John Moore’s original lasts. The designs, with their blunt toeboxes styled after pig noses and leather straps hanging from boots, were essentially one-to-one replicas of John Moore’s work.
The Old Curiosity Shop was to be the spiritual successor of John Moore’s studio and store, The House of Beauty and Culture, which closed after the designer’s sudden passing in 1989. It was at this boutique where Moore sold his unorthodox footwear designs alongside other fledgling London talent such as fashion designer Christopher Nemeth, photographer Mark Lebon, and stylist-cum-jewelry designer Judy Blame. The likes of David Bowie and William Burroughs are known visitors to the shop, and it’s rumored to have pointed Martin Margiela toward deconstructionism.
For Yamamoto, it was a hugely influential time. The foundations for Kids Love Gaite were laid in London: Learning to handcraft the finest in eccentric leather footwear, following in the pioneering footsteps of John Moore.
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Yamamoto returned to Japan in 2000, working for traditional shoemaker DECORTE in Tokyo’s shoemaking hub of Asakusa for ten years — in a factory and later as a salesperson — before he felt it was time to create his own line of footwear. He’d built up an arsenal of skills, like the nuances of Japanese shoemaking and the commercial side of the business through being a salesman, but it’s his formative years in England that have had the most indelible impact on his brand.
Yamamoto is one of many shoemakers who, having interacted with John Moore’s work in London, are keeping his legacy alive: Ian Reid continued making shoes for a while, and was commissioned by Alexander McQueen for his career-defining 1995 Highland Rape collection, The Old Curiosity Shop still handmakes original John Moore designs, and in 2019 Moore’s ex-agent, Chris Derham, founded the brand John Moore Re-Imagined. However, KIDS LOVE GAITE isn’t a tribute act.
Sure, Moore-ism’s are clear to see in the off-beat, artisanal designs, but they are cleverly twisted, manipulated, and shaped by Yamamoto. It’s a contemporary nod to the post-punk pioneers of the ‘80s, not a recreation. And just as Moore’s did in the ‘80s, his shoemaking is swiftly gaining the attention, and respect, of today’s most fearlessly creative fashion designers. As Yamamoto puts it: “I’m trying to make shoes that surpass John Moore’s signature models.”
