Loewe spells out its name in the buckles of new sandals

Loewe has built the branding on its new Type Fussbett sandal entirely out of hardware.

Five oversized metal buckles, each individually shaped, spell out L-O-E-W-E across the crisscrossing suede straps: a logo made from the fixtures that would normally hold the shoe together.

From a distance the sandal looks like a straightforward multi-buckle mule; up close, the hardware resolves into type.

The buckles are also a bit of a trick in themselves: despite the working pin and loop design, none of them actually adjust the fit. They are there to be read, not used.

The rest of the shoe carries branding too, just less visibly. At $1,250, the price sits in line with Loewe’s other leather sandals despite the buckles doing no structural work.

The sandal is the latest sign of how Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez are handling Loewe’s house codes since taking over as creative directors last year.

It follows a run of Loewe products built around a similar joke, from the brand’s synthetic-turf trainers to its pixelated runway stunt, both built on the same idea that a material or a mechanism can carry the brand more effectively than a logo can.

Style press has already picked the sandal apart, with reviewers split on whether hardware-as-branding is clever or gimmicky. Either way, it has done what it needed to: got people looking closely enough to spell out the name.

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