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Dan Sullivan: I get ideas in my sleep, or when I'm falling asleep. That half-awake, half-dreaming time is really productive. Or sometimes when I'm on a plane, or walking around with my earphones in. I just let my mind wander to see how creative I can be. But having the idea is the easy part. The hard part is actually making the shoe.
We start off modeling all the effects in 3D. Then for the Star Wars collection, we sent the mock-ups to Lucasfilm, and they checked it and said "Yoda's eyes need to be a bit bigger," or whatever. Then we send the images to the heel maker, who hand-carves the prototype in wood. He's done bunny heels, ice cream heels, unicorn heels, Santa heels for us; the lot.Tell me about the famous Star Wars collection.
For the Star Wars launch, we had people traveling through the night to get to the store for the opening. We had one lady who flew down from Scotland, ran to the shop, bought her shoes, and flew back straight away. Another woman started saving her money for the Star Wars collection as soon as it got announced, before she even saw the shoes online. There are so many people who are just beautiful fans.
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I don't really want to comment too much on the letter specifically. But those R2-D2 shoes were our best-ever seller. We sold out the entire run—3,000 pairs—in half an hour. Apparently they're being sold on eBay now for £400 [$605].What is it about R2-D2?
Everyone loves R2-D2! He's the cutie, isn't he? It's his cute voice! He's got that Japanese feel to him, too.
Yoda's one of my favorite characters. Other people had done Yoda prints on shoe uppers before, but I wanted to come at it from a different angle. So many people think that Star Wars is just masculine, but it has such a big female following, too. So I wanted to see what we could do with heels—I wanted the Yoda heel to be the big feature.How technically challenging are these shoes to make?
On the Star Wars heel we've got speakers and lights in the platform. So you press a button and it makes lightsaber sounds or R2-D2 sounds. It's really challenging to get the speaker and lights into the platform of the heel, I've never heard of anyone else doing that. We had wanted the Darth Vader voice, but unfortunately Lucasfilm wouldn't allow it. Something to do with copyright issues.
Maybe the Balletomane wedge. A friend of mine asked, a few years ago, when are you going to make some ballet pumps? She just wanted the standard ballet flats everyone wears.
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We've had customers who've moved house so they can convert a room into an Irregular Choice room for all their shoes. One lady told me she'd been offered two jobs, and she took the one nearer our Carnaby Street store so that she could walk past our window every morning.There are collectors who spend tens of thousands of pounds on the website each year. This lady in the shop the other day, she told me that she'd bought 56 different versions of this one shoe we do. She said to me, "Every time you do a new color, I buy it." I didn't even realize I'd done 56 colorways of that shoe.How comfortable are these shoes to actually wear?
We try not to cripple people with what they're wearing, so we have test models based in our factories in China. But we design all the shoes over here in the UK.We know that a lot of people don't like wearing high heels. For example, if you're a hairdresser you don't want to be walking around in heels all day. So for them I'd probably recommend the C3PO or Darth Vader flats.
Every girl loves a unicorn, don't they? But we wouldn't do anything just for the shock value, or swear or be rude. We're about fun. It's all about being on the rainbow side of life.Your shoes definitely attract attention.
My shoes are "wow" shoes, definitely. A good friend of mine met her fiancé because she was wearing a pair of my "I Love You" heels in a bar. A guy came up to her and was like, "I love your heels," and now they're engaged.I think, if you're wearing something fun, it makes people happy. People think you're more approachable when you wear something nice, you know. I'll walk around in a jumper with a bunny rabbit on it, and people will smile at me.Everyone else just walks around, so busy in their own worlds. But when you show off your fun, creative side, people are more open to you! When you have hearts on your heels—well, hopefully they will bring you love.Follow Sirin on Twitter.