Martine Rose unveils collection and debut campaign for Clarks

Clarks has unveiled its collection and campaign with Martine Rose as its guest creative director with the company saying it “spotlights the ultimate comfort of the subversive, inaugural collection” that was first seen at the designer’s SS24 runway show. 

Shot by Sharna Osbourne, we’re told the Coming Up Roses campaign “finds the Martine Rose clan inside a series of bedroom vignettes, constructed for our viewing pleasure”.

It’s all inspired by vintage Clarks advertising circa 1980, “where beds conveyed the supreme comfort of Clarks shoes”. The company said that this season’s “MR possé lounge in retro bedsits, ready for their close-up. Emblematic of the ultra-cushioned Martine Rose x Clarks designs, intimate interiors strike a balance between reality and artifice as quietly subversive characters enact the pleasures of private bedroom pastimes”. 

As for the products themselves, the designer has revamped perennial shoes from the Clarks archive and one more recent addition. “Nodding to Austrian artist Erwin Wurm’s ‘Convertible Fat Cars’, The Oxford, The Loafer and The Sandal are taken to new, squidgy proportions but retain their classic flair,” we’re told. 

They come in brazen pink, brown and green snake-effect styles, plus oxblood and black colourways, and are made from 100% recycled nylon fabric uppers, with breathable leather linings. 

“This hero triptych”, plus the newer Torhill Hi (that’s also linked to an archive style), also all feature moulded footbed supports to maximise on comfort. 

Looking at them in more detail, the classic Oxford “redresses ‘smart-casual’ with its cushioned silhouette and recycled nylon upper, infusing athleisure into the sartorial staple which now has a flexible rubber outsole and padded toplines around the ankle. Similarly, The Loafer’s bodacious makeover includes a chunky 20mm platform sole and inflated heel. The Sandal does away with the passé crackle of velcro, instead featuring three adjustable straps with magnetic fastening”.

Meanwhile the Torhill Hi, a high-top silhouette that’s “a descendant of the iconic Clarks Wallabee”, is “toughened up with a chunky, grated thermoplastic rubber outsole. Finished with a debossed leather branded fob, this style is made exclusively in snake-effect leather. The familiar is unfamiliar, the ordinary made extraordinary – in true Martine Rose style”.

Rose said of the campaign that given the collection was about “comfort and this overblown feeling of softness and squidginess, it felt easy and natural to create that feeling around bedding”.

The collection launches on 12 February exclusively on MartineRose.com and Selfridges and 16 February globally on Clarks.com and via select retailers.