How 'Walk A Mile' brought size inclusivity to Zalando’s Designer footwear offering

When making inclusivity a priority one product category is often left behind - footwear. Inclusive shoe sizes are vastly ignored, creating a void for a community of people who are constantly unable to find shoes that fit them while making them feel good about their style. Identifying this need, Zalando collaborated with seven designer brands to create a size-inclusive footwear collection - “Walk A Mile”. 

Finding A Gap and Tackling It

Through conversations with the organizers of Helsinki Pride, of which Zalando has been a sponsor for a few years, the brand understood that several members of the queer community, often transwomen, find it hard to discover statement footwear in their sizes. The sessions also helped Zalando understand how blind spots continue to exist. 

“The path to inclusivity starts with walking a mile in someone else's shoes. The collaboration is another step forward in our journey towards being a truly inclusive destination,”  said Lena-Sophie Röper, Director of Design and Luxury at Zalando, “we hope this is one of many collections of this nature we will work on to help make fashion inclusive for all.”

Being born with feet beyond the sample size shouldn’t restrict anyone from the joy of owning truly beautiful designer footwear. This problem extends beyond the queer community to cis women with larger feet and cis men with gender fluid style, and mandated that Zalando as a brand must take action.

Empowering Customers Through Empowering Partners

“Walk a Mile” features unique, inclusive, and on-trend designs by Filling Pieces, Rejina Pyo, Holzweiler, MISBHV, Elleme, GCDS, and Ekchaus Latta while shining a light on designer brands that are driving change. Each of the seven designers has used their distinctive styles and voices in their designs while working with a shared vision of creating inclusive, customer-centric fashion.

“I wanted everyone who enjoys GCDS’s creative codes to be able to wear these shoes and enjoy them as much as I enjoyed designing them,” said Giuliano Calza, Founder & Creative Director at GCDS, “When Zalando came with the offer, I was extremely excited because I knew they had a strong community and a large reach that could help me get these shoes to more people. I am grateful to be able to share my designs with a larger audience.”

When it comes to creating footwear in unusual sizes, smaller designer brands are often unable to meet the costs of creating additional molds outside of the regular sizes (36-41) in women’s footwear. To offset this, Zalando funded the production of sizes from 42 to 46 for the participating designer brands. Owing to this investment, each brand can continue creating inclusive footwear in these sizes for their forthcoming collections.

“Looking into the future, we hope to base a big part of our collection on inclusiveness and use production synergies that allow us to use existing tooling to make sure the products are made for various sizes from the start,” said Guillaume Philibert, Founder at Filling Pieces.

Irrespective of their gender expression, this collection enables footwear enthusiasts from twenty-five Zalando markets to choose a pair of shoes from 14 styles in the collection in sizes ranging from 35 to 46.

“We value inclusivity as a core value of our brand and hope that this is the beginning of the new normal. We should be living in a post-gender and post-inclusivity era where the option to not offer inclusive sizing doesn’t exist,” said Natalia Maczek, Founder of MISBHV.

Driving Inclusivity By Doing Better

The collection plays into Zalando's vision of being the Starting Point for Fashion and welcoming all customers. With the do.BETTER strategy, Zalando is committed to offering a truly diverse assortment for underrepresented groups by providing product choices and thoughtful experiences in every category across price, size, and style.

“Walk A Mile” is one more step in the direction of realizing this commitment to its fullest extent.