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Innovation, tradition, environmentalism and a sense of humour combine at the company which produces the Art and Neosens shoe brands. Based in La Rioja and with exports accounting for 80% of sales, The Art Company has brought the values and traditions of a region known for its excellent wines to the world of shoes. What it offers is a rather different kind of product with a metropolitan soul which has triumphed in 35 countries.

How do you turn a traditional shoe factory into such an unconventional footwear brand?
Invulsa (Inyectados y Vulcanizados) had been making shoes in Quel in La Rioja for the best part of 30 years. The time came when it needed a young brand that could offer something new and distinctive. That was how The Art Company started in 1995. Today it sells two brands: Art, which was also created in 1995 and Neosens which launched in 2007.

Both names sound like a philosophy of life…
With Art, we wanted to bring art to the world of shoes, making them fun, colourful, comfortable and very urban accessories. With Neosens, the aim was to give footwear new meaning, bringing back the values more traditionally associated with the wines our region, La Rioja, is famous for. Neosens are classics with a twist.

“We don’t talk about burgundy but rather Rioja-red”

How do you bring wine values to footwear?
We did some market research before we launched Neosens. We wanted to know what people associated with Rioja wine, and they were all positive values: quality, spontaneity, attention to detail, innovation, a special touch… The world of wine has undergone a revolution in recent years, with cutting-edge creations – like the wineries designed by Frank Gehry and Zara Hadid – which live alongside tradition and craftsmanship. We wanted to do the same thing, creating shoes with premium materials, following tradition but adding innovative elements into dyeing, washing, soles, stitching, cut, finish and even colour. We don’t talk about the colour burgundy. We say Rioja red. ‘Highly-expressive wines’ are the ones oenologists make in an attempt to break away from the established systems and achieve something better than ever before. What we are producing are ‘highly-expressive shoes’.

The craftsman’s touch is apparent in both brands, where is the innovation in your production process?
With Art we always go for water-resistant leather which is specially treated, but at the same time, we like to give the shoes a used, lived-in feel. They have a lot of character and we’ve been using them for many years. With Neosens we use a different dyeing system which distinguishes us from the rest and injects personality. The product is made in a raw leather colour and then we use immersion or sponge-dyeing. Then there’s the brushing and use of specific creams to give them a natural, very special finish which has become a brand signature. Sometimes we look for less conventional colours, like the copper, bronze and silver we used in the autumn/winter 2009/10 collection, which we achieved by using metal mesh.