Brand Rooted in Design, Denim, and Raleigh, North Carolina, Finds Kinship with Iconic Hand-Crafted American Footwear Brand

Iconic footwear brand Allen Edmonds, one of the Caleres (NYSE:CAL) brands, today announces the collaborator for their latest Legend Series drop, Raleigh Denim Workshop.

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Allen Edmonds Collaborates with Raleigh Denim Workshop for Drop 02 of its Legend Series (Photo: Business Wire)

The artistic collaboration between Allen Edmonds’ creative team and Raleigh Denim Workshop founder and designer Victor Lytvinenko will debut next month with a nod to fine art through a gallery exhibition of painted canvases that will be sold and later handcrafted into shoes. The exhibition and sale will take place at a private event hosted by Lytvinenko at Allen Edmonds’ Rockefeller Plaza, New York store on March 2, 2023, at 5:30 p.m. EST. Twenty-two individually numbered black denim canvases uniquely bleach-painted by Lytvinenko will be on display and available for purchase both in-person and via Instagram Live for $1,295. Each canvas purchased will be sent to the Allen Edmonds factory in Port Washington, Wisconsin, to be transformed into a bespoke pair of shoes by the artisans there. Each pair, hand signed by Lytvinenko.

Developed based on Allen Edmonds’ iconic brogue oxford, each finished one-of-a-kind pair will feature exposed black eyelets and a black lacquered leather sole laser-etched with Lytvinenko’s personal mantra, “Follow your heart. The meaning of the things we wear is as important as the thing itself.” A digital art brochure of the canvases is available now along with a dedicated page sharing a deeper story around the collaboration at AllenEdmonds.com.

Building on the rarity of the 22 pairs and dropping on March 6, Lytvinenko also designed a limited edition run of 200 pairs of Strand Oxfords, named the Strand Denim Dahlia Oxford. These shoes are crafted in black selvage denim, sourced by Lytvinenko from Vidalia Mills in Louisiana, and feature a black lacquered sole with a distinguished black grosgrain tab on the heel. The delicate fraying of the denim, created by the Port Washington Studio cutting process, adds texture to each pair. The Strand Denim Dahlia will be sold for $495 in Allen Edmonds’ retail stores and online at AllenEdmonds.com

Allen Edmonds has launched a campaign created for the partnership featuring both Lytvinenko and world-renowned musician and model, Adonis Bosso, photographed exclusively by Cliff Watts. The inspiration was Lytvinenko’s study of individuality and the creation of things that feel similar yet are each an original, like the heirloom Dahlia flowers he grows on his farm.

“The tension and balance of what is acceptably formal felt ripe for exploration,” said Lytvinenko. “Exchanging black leather for black denim on a classically formal brogue created something unexpected, a more free approach to formal.”

“The Legend Series was created and exists to provoke the very nature of what’s classic now,” said David Law, senior vice president at Allen Edmonds. “By working with authorities in their given field who share our passion for craft, we remaster our icons and explore the very definition of classics, which are the foundation of Allen Edmonds.”

Legend Series Drop 01 was in partnership with British waxed jacket pioneer, Barbour. Legend Series Drop 03 is coming in fall 2023, as Allen Edmonds continues to champion craft, heritage and the beautiful journey that is the endless pursuit of perfection as part of their life’s work. Learn more here.

For more information or press inquiries, contact Coded Agency at allenedmonds@codedagency.com.

About Raleigh Denim Workshop

Raleigh Denim Workshop is an American enterprise / art project / romantic adventure started by Sarah Yarborough and Victor Lytvinenko. They began with the idea of making the ideal pair of jeans. The kind you can wear everyday (we do). They took a bunch of jeans apart to learn how to put them together; lugged machines out of old factories and storage units; and sat at their kitchen tables and stood in garages hearing from men and women who worked at facilities that no longer exist, and then they figured out how to make those old machines run again.

About Allen Edmonds

Celebrating 100 years in 2022, Allen Edmonds Shoe Corporation is a U.S.-based manufacturer of premium men’s footwear and accessories crafted in the USA, using only premium leathers via a 212-step process, Allen Edmonds dress and casual shoes are a timeless and sophisticated representation of American style. To ensure they can be worn for a lifetime or passed down as an heirloom, the brand offers shoe recrafting services out of its Port Washington, Wisconsin, factory, which has saved over 500,000 pairs of shoes from landfills over the last 10 years.

About Caleres

Caleres is the home of today’s most coveted footwear brands and represents a diverse portfolio spanning all of life’s styles and experiences. Every shoe tells a story and Caleres has the perfect fit for every one of them. Our collections have been developed and acquired to meet the evolving needs of today’s assorted and growing global audiences, with consumer insights driving every aspect of the innovation, design, and craft that goes into our distinctly positioned brands, including Famous Footwear, Sam Edelman, Naturalizer, Allen Edmonds, Vionic, Dr. Scholl’s Shoes, and more. The Caleres story is most simply defined by the company’s mission: Inspire people to feel great…feet first.

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