Claire Michel - Triathlete
"I don't think there's anything more unifying than sport. Alongside art and music, it transcends language, culture and background. When you've spent hours pushing through challenges together, a bond naturally forms."
Beyond Competition
Jade Vansteenkiste - Gymnast
"The success of another athlete can be valuable for yourself as well. Teammates are there to push each other to a higher level. If one person performs better, the rest of the team has to rise to that level too. When you can build that mindset within a team, that everyone brings out the best in each other, you move beyond pure competition. Besides that, seeing each other as rivals every single day is simply exhausting."
The Value of the Journey
Héloïse Doumont - Climber
"What makes me most proud is all the psychological work behind it. Competition is only the endpoint; it isn't the path itself. What truly matters is everything that happens along the way."
Double Standards
Naomi Van den Broeck - Sprinter and hurdler
"When male athletes are highly competitive, they're seen as driven. When women show that same competitiveness, they're often labelled as divas. I don't understand why confidence and being outspoken about your goals are celebrated in men, but judged differently in women."
Claire Orcel - High Jumper
“Sport gave me confidence in myself. Performing well made me feel stronger in my body and more secure as a person. I've always been optimistic, but sport showed me that if you truly want something, you can achieve it. If I wanted to reach the World Track and Field Championships, all I had to do was put in the work and keep going.”
Representation in Professional Sport
Isabel Grevelt - Speedskater
"I think women would understand much better what I'm experiencing as an athlete. I'd love the opportunity to train under a female coach one day, but in speed skating, they simply aren't there."
Identity Beyond Performance
Leen Haerens - Professor Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Ghent University
"Working on identity is incredibly important, and it should start at a young age. When an athlete's entire identity is built around sport and that suddenly falls away, whether through retirement or a serious injury, there is often very little left to hold on to. Without other interests or parts of themselves to fall back on, many athletes end up in a very dark place."
Where did the inspiration for this collaboration come from? What was the importance of combining PHILEO, a French fashion brand, with the KEEN label beyond just utility?
I wouldn't say that we're a fashion brand; footwear, and what is commonly called accessories, take its source product design a bit further away from the glorified place fashion usually sits in.
The first question I ask myself when starting a collaboration is "what is the creative/technical exchange between us and them?" Of course, KEEN has expertise in the security footwear category but also a real manufacturing expertise overall and an incredible archive of footwear. It is an incredible inspiration to work with such passionate people.
How did art installation crews inspire this collection? Is there a specific style that you can identify with art installers?
We work with a lot of artists, and usually they're always wearing distressed, old, undesigned security footwear. The distressing almost gives them a grunge look. It just seemed inappropriate to me that the people creating inspiration and beauty would not wear inspiring footwear.
A big part of the KEEN legacy is conscious and ethical manufacturing. How does this collaboration keep in that tradition?
I think being conscious of the world we live in is the basis of my brand, ethics in its diversity of senses. We have to adapt to our time to keep being able to live on our home planet. KEEN's attachment to innovation in footwear manufacturing is extremely inspiring and should be the same for all brands on earth.
They have the industrial means; we have the design intent. We worked with their teams to ensure the shoes are as durable as possible, a tool for the long term.
Workwear is something that has become integral to everyday style, and is becoming more and more interwoven with high-fashion aesthetics. Do you think that this interconnectedness between style and function gives more dignity to laborers?
I wouldn't dare talk about dignity, our consumerist world pushes high-intensity product drops, and when a brand wants to create a "cheap"/"commercial" product, they usually create a bland/generic one.
We need to be creating/producing with intent, it is a privilege to be able to design/create something for other people to enjoy. We're designers, creative, or whatever one's calling him/herself but, in the end, we create tools for people to inspire themselves. Shoes to wander, discover, explore.
This lack of intent in generic commercial design creates the need for people to buy things grounded in function, hence gorpcore or workwear being adopted by so many people nowadays.
It is just true: radically functional products are designed for a reason; they're successful in it, and that's why they cross pre-established boundaries. Product designers should be radical, intentional, progressive even when they're creating a sub-100$ shoe. In Japanese, there's this notion of Sokubaku that I find very interesting; it is about turning constraint into a creative force.
Matt Dillon is such an interesting choice as a campaign star. How did you come to that decision to have him be the face of this collaboration?
It happened quite naturally when we started talking with Ari. Matt just made sense. He's a very inspiring person. He's a real creative/artist in its diversity of senses and, for Ari, Antoine, and me, he just made sense.
What are the most important factors in designing clothing that’s durable yet fashionable?
INTENT! I know I use that word a lot, but it is the genuine core of everything I stand for and believe in.
Leading the collection are two of the brand’s hero handbag styles: the Duo Mini Shoulder Bag, a versatile favorite, and the Margot Shoulder Bag, the ultimate holiday party plus-one. Available in a festive palette of red, pink, and silver, both styles offer a compact yet practical size, making them perfect for any holiday gathering, a night out on the town, or wherever the season takes you.
