Jan Jansen is one of the world’s most famous shoe designers. Already in his earliest designs he succeeded in combining a perfect control of traditional techniques with an unrestrained creativity and feeling for colour, materials and innovation. After spending some time in Italy, where he learned the tricks of the trade of making shoes by hand, he settled in Amsterdam in the early Sixties, where he started a studio as a haute chaussurier. His idiosyncratic designs were rapidly picked up in the swinging city and before he knew it he was part of the artistic vanguard. He has made thousands of shoe designs, including many that have in the meantime become classics and which are often shamelessly copied. The Woody, the bamboo shoe, the men’s shoe with diagonal zipper, the models with a floating heel – each time Jansen is well ahead of trends and is later imitated on a large scale. Jan Jansen tells the story of an impassioned designer. Of a man who is always searching for beauty, surprise and innovation, and who refuses to make any commercial concessions. It has not made him wealthy, but he does not think this important. What he mainly wanted to become was a good designer. As you can read in this book, he has more than succeeded in this.