Natural trainers with soft touch on the planet
When Erman Aykurt previously worked at Adidas, he channeled his love for bicycles on behalf of his colleagues by building bespoke, yet affordable road bikes for them… Switch to right now and Erman has blended his focus into making casual bike-friendly footwear under the brand name Zeebraham. The concept is to keep the designs simple, low impact, and recyclable. The uppers are vegetable-tanned leather sourced and when you’re finished with your shoes the leather will be compost within twenty days, so they’re never going to be a burden to the waste issue. s with all the components for the Zeebraham shoes, from supplies less than 200km from the factory in Portugal. Why Portugal? Simple, it’s a European mecca for artisanal footwear manufacturers and cobbling skills – all vital for making low-volume runs of shoes. The uppers feature reinforcement from sections of pre-used car seat belts ‘We collect lengths of the old seat belts from the local junkyard, cut and wash them before stitching them into place on the uppers. The insoles are recycled polyurethane with a memory foam layer- to make them feel like slippers.
The outsoles, a classic gum color – the natural latex rubber is soft and pliable, yet durable and recyclable. As you wear the shoes – eventually out - the natural latex also doesn’t add to the micro-plastics issue either.
Clearly, this first model, limited to 200 pairs worldwide, is a classic casual trainer, which while totally rideable with flat pedals, isn’t a performance solution. Erman adds ‘We’re going to develop a clipless model…but it’s very much one step at a time’
The 2fifty9 view is one of shoe lust. We think the Zeebraham ZEE1 is bang on for style and we wholly approve of the green credentials that are at the heart of everything that Erman is trying to achieve with Zeebraham. Personally, as not so closet sneakerheads, we’d love to see an off-white ZEE1, with a natural suede toe… just sayin’