You must have seen it by now… We’ve teamed up with Norman Walsh Footwear to rework their archive Ensign sneaker.
Universal Works Director David Keyte when not running the business is an avid road runner. So with Walsh being so well known in the running community, we jumped at the chance to work together on a special project.
“The guy that started it, Norman Walsh, was making running shoes for athletes, so it had some realness. I also love the fact that they're small because we're small and I like to champion that. I think it's exciting and interesting that we can still exist in this massive corporate world we live in.” – DK
We chose to rework the Walsh Ensign – A trainer originally designed for the 1981 NYC marathon. We were inspired by the idea of Norman Walsh designing the shoe in a provincial northern city for one of the world's largest marathons. We reworked his design into three versions that represent three of the world's major cities that have become integral to our company, London, Paris, and Tokyo.
To help celebrate the release we enlisted the help of John Jarrett of Individualism (London), Nicolas Chalmeau of La Collab' Saisonnière (Paris), and Hiroyuki Katoh of Maidens Shop (Tokyo) photographing the sneakers in the cities they were inspired by.
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