Ainsley-t: prices dropped on shoes museums love to show
Ainsley-t shoes, maker of fetish-inspired designer footwear, has just announced a price drop for retail and trade customers. Time to get your hands on — and your feet into — a pair of these modern classics, before they’re all snapped up for museum exhibitions!
The Ainsley-t shoe label, launched by British designer Stuart Thom to offer top quality footwear with full-on fetish features such as ballgags and whip holsters, has made some changes that could see these unique products available from a lot more retailers, and at lower prices.
The label — whose shoes have always been Italian-made — is now working with a small family-run factory in central Italy, and this has enabled a revision of the line’s suggested retail prices.
In the UK, Ainsley-t shoes now start at £234 for the Fluffy Slipper, rising through £350 for the Plug Pump and £375 for the Gag Sandal, to £692 for the Plug Boot.
The full range can be found at the new Ainsley-t shoes online shop (www.ainsley-t.com/shop), where prices are shown exclusive of VAT.
The new pricing strategy also offers retailers greater flexibility when ordering wholesale quantities. Ainsely-t’s minimum wholesale trade order is now just six pairs. “And at that volume we can do special colours and finishes, subject to the availability of hides,” Stuart promises.
A couple of new European retail outlets for Ainsley-t shoes have already been added since the changes came into force. In the Austrian capital of Vienna, famous latex label HW-Design now sells Ainsley-t through its web shop.
Meanwhile in Dresden, Germany, Bitter Sweet Secrets, which sells fetishy styles from designers such as Patrice Catanzaro, has also become an Ainsley-t stockist.
But it’s not just shops that are showing off their Ainsley-t stock — Stuart has now seen his creations included in several mainstream European shoe exhibitions.
For example, until May 11, the Kunsthal Rotterdam in Holland is hosting S.H.O.E.S. Head over Heels — an ‘exceptional modern-historical and contemporary overview of the shoe’.
Exhibits range from Victorian boots circa 1900, early stilettos, and 1970s platform shoes, to models by contemporary designers such as Rogier Vivier, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Jan Janssen, Rem D Koolhaas and Christian Louboutin.
Ainsley-t is also represented by its Gag Sandal and Plug Boot designs, the latter loaned from the Dutch Leather and Shoe museum’s permanent collection in Waalwijk.
“Of all the shoes in the show,” observes Stuart, “we’re pretty sure our Gag Sandals will be the only ones you can wear in your mouth.”
Recently, Ainsly-t also participated in Berlin’s First International Shoe Museum, curated by Liza Snook of the Virtual Shoe Museum, and held at the What About Shoes show in Berlin.
STOP PRESS: In London, Ainsley-t shoes at the new prices are available now from the Atsuko Kudo store.
‘Of all the shoes in the show,’ observes Stuart Thom, ‘we’re pretty sure our Gag Sandals will be the only ones you can wear in your mouth’
PRINCIPAL LINKS
www.ainsley-t.com
www.hwdesign.at
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Tags: Retail, Shoes