ON THE LINES OF JAN JANSEN

From April 2, Museum JAN in Amstelveen will host the exhibition 'On the last of Jan Jansen - 60 years of shoes and Dutch Design'. The exhibition features the work of Jan Jansen, or 'The crazy shoe maker' as Vogue Italia affectionately calls him. For more than 60 years he has been a master of colorful, extravagant and groundbreaking shoe design.Text: Fleur de Jong
Image: Virtualshoemuseum

Jan Jansen plays with gravity

Jansen wanted to become a shoe designer from a young age. During his military service on Saturdays, he worked in a shoe store in Nijmegen. There he cut open shoes to see how they were technically put together. In 1962, he went to a shoe atelier in Rome for six months to learn how to make shoes by hand.

Jansen became world famous for his technical constructions that play with gravity, such as the floating heel. Exuberant use of color is also characteristic of his shoes. He also designed the Bamboo Shoe, a shoe with a high wedge heel made of bamboo, in 1973. The shoe designer's work is seen as a source of inspiration for generations to come. With the exhibition, Museum JAN thus also provides a platform for young talent and shows the cross-generational influence of Jan Jansen's work.

The shoe designer now has thousands of designs to his name and is a fashion icon at home and abroad. In 2005, for example, Armani took a lace-up shoe off the market that a court ruled had been copied from Jansen. The exhibition will also feature work by designers with a similar style or inspired by the shoe designer. Especially for the exhibition, the designer's memoirs will appear in a limited, signed edition. 

The exhibition from April 2 through August 29 at museum JAN in Amstelveen.Photo: X-Ray schoenView the interview MASTERS previously had with Jan Jansen here.