Late in 2008, through Jaime Hayon, I had a meeting with Miguel and Lorenzo Fluxa at Camper in Mallorca, and they asked me to design a shoe. I looked through their archive and came across a pair of shoes made in canvas and leather called Cameleon, which I learned Lorenzo Fluxa had launched the company with. They were based on the typical Mallorcan shoe that people made using the scraps from the shoe industry. I liked their rustic character and material economy and we agreed to try to update them.
I’d recently noticed a man sitting on a wall in Barcelona who was obviously poor but dressed with great style, and I tried to design the shoe with something of his spirit. Not knowing much about how shoes were made, I was helped along by Cecilia Llorens, who managed the project.
Later we made a proposal for the packaging with the slogan ‘For people who like to walk’ and a Camper & Jasper logo to announce the collaboration. We followed that shoe with a variation with fewer lace holes, and designed some pop-up stores in New York and Venice with a system of cork blocks, wooden planks and lengths of dowel to hold them together. The shops were set up so quickly, and for such a short time, I never had a chance to see them.
Extracted from A Book of Things by Jasper Morrison (Lars Müller Publishers, 2015)