Nessa Wrafter: I'm here with Natalie from Beyond Skin who has but a gorgeous range of shoes to show us. Hi, Natalie.
Natalie Dean: Hello, there.
Nessa Wrafter: Now tell us what is special about Beyond Skin shoes.
Natalie Dean: Beyond skin is predominantly an ethical label. I started it four years ago ought to becoming a vegan offspring that’s tiring for a long time. And I thought there was a lack of coati fridge used on the market. It opened the kind of warm for me on the kind of ethical front. And the more I started researching and looking into for thread the more I realized that there was a lot more angles where I could try and make the shoes more ethical along the way. So now, we’re producing England and we’ll have a fabric as so as in Europe.
Nessa Wrafter: I can see that we’ve got a great range here because it got right bridals to use in them. We got a really funky bride’s maid or guest to wedding shoes. So tell me about what we’ve got.
Natalie Dean: The bridal shoes are made to order early. So what happens is a customer contacts us. They discuss their wedding with us and we send them the whole selection of swatches which could be vintage fabrics or just a whole selection of fabrics that we sourced to a kind of bridal orientated. And we send them out as swatches and they pick the stall that they’d like and the fabric that they’d like and then we have to make the shoe for them.
Nessa Wrafter: I’ve seen some gorgeous fabrics on the table here. Where would something like this come from?
Natalie Dean: Well, this one particularly is made from vintage recycled fabric so we go drafting off around the country to a selection of vintage fuzz and we basically for each hour and find gorgeous fabrics that we’ have make shoes out of. So most of these collection which is spike wetting, dye of fabrics that we’ve just select to the source from Europe or the U.K. that’s a kind of as far as we go as far as outsourcing. We try to keep everything as close to hands as possible.
Nessa Wrafter: Where do you start when you’re designing patches?
Natalie Dean: Where do we start? Well, all shoes are made and some of them couldn’t last which is our motto so most of the time, we have lots and we kind of visualize kind of shapes that work really, really well. We do a lot of kind of research kind of forging around vintage offs is getting like this, some kind of previous generations and lots of them. I will tell you it’s based on what we like.
Nessa Wrafter: What would be your alternative to leather then if you didn’t want to wear something silky?
Natalie Dean: Okay, we do something called PU which is full leather. It’s polyurethane. This is a liquefied snake skin which is made out of PU It’s actually that technology as come on so much since the plastic shoes that used to go in the 70s. Thank goodness which well often PV says. Now, they are breathable. They are antibacterial and they outsource in Italy and they are very high tech and a lot actually more expensive than leather.
Nessa Wrafter: So talk me to the range in front of me.
Natalie Dean: Okay, take a closer look. This has been one of our more popular wedding shoes. It is the Carrie shoe, and it’s a really lovely white mask which we tend to so quite low of this to masque. They kind of come in lots of pretty bright colors actually but white obviously for the wedding seems to be were it comes.
Nessa Wrafter: That’s a very high heel.
Natalie Dean: It’s a rather high heel. It wasn’t it bit high for me. I'm not tall.
Nessa Wrafter: I want a bit bitchy. This is gorgeous.
Natalie Dean: That’s a Kylie shoe. That’s a very similar to the Carrie without an outrageously high heel but it’s so popular shoe. It’s quite kind of retr, kind of 50s vibe going on and this fabric is just one that we outsource from Europe that we constantly have in stock.
Nessa Wrafter: And these are very Garden of Eden, aren’t they?
Natalie Dean: Yes, that’s a beautiful vintage property that we’ve found. Actually, this is one of the shoes that were imposed to mistress in front of the garden and yeah. Beautiful, beautiful fabric, unfortunately we’ve run out to fit now.
Nessa Wrafter: Oh no.
Natalie Dean: Sadly.
Nessa Wrafter: What a shame. Oh! I love these because they are really brightly color but they are still in that vintage fabric.
Natalie Dean: They are, these are from out off vintage collection actually and then that’s absolutely beautiful fabric.
Nessa Wrafter: Well, I do with the shoes. I wouldn’t feel guilty wearing them and I think that’s fantastic combination. Thank you so much for joining us.
Natalie Dean: Oh! Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
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