Mocassins à la trace

A performance imagined and conceived by Olivier Saillard.

Clothing in abundance, we all know the experience: temptation, sometimes regret, and always the reasonable, everyday necessity. When it comes to shoes, which offer the grace of uniting utility and fantasy, it seems we grant them greater consideration, respectful of the steps they allow us to take. In shoes, we possess the luxury of movement, of walking, the most ecological form of locomotion, and the most ancestral as well.

We can move forward, hesitate, turn back, change our minds, stamp our feet, wander, and dream. In these “wind soles,” so dear to Rimbaud, we can even imagine our lives, create them with poetry and with traces.

The simple desire to bring together second-skin garments and shoes of sentiment led us to invite a few people dear to the House to propose a new way of conceiving a creative journey here, at J.M. Weston.

Each of those who kindly agreed to participate entrusted us with a garment that was personal to them: a beloved piece, chosen for a shared fragment of life.

Within these woven memories, unique to each individual, the workshops of the J.M. Weston manufacture carefully measured, delicately separated, and cut the discreet geographies of footsteps, before assembling entirely new loafers.

The year 2026 will mark an anniversary. In 1946, 80 years ago, the 180 loafer was born. Even today, it remains faithful to its original design and to the multiple, unique savoir-faire it embodies. There could be no finer celebration than to unite the timeless, unchanged forms of this loafer with these fragments of life, whose remnants of color have served as new skins.

Because there is no luxury without rarity, and because rarity can reside in the secret everyday life of each individual, we are particularly proud to present this collection, a true performance of gestures and memories—from the workshops of Limoges to tonight’s stage that made its realization possible.

I want to believe in a haute couture of the ordinary, a forward-looking haute couture—one that reflects the life journeys of each of us rather than ignoring them. May this haute couture of the intimate, which we are convinced will lead us toward new territories, allow the dignified memory of women and men to serve as a standard of measure.

OLIVIER SAILLARD FOR J.M. WESTON