The Jan Jansen Effect
For many youngsters and young adults Jan Jansen is fairly unknown territory. And it’s downright thrilling to see their enthusiastic response on the collections. On the other hand there is still a part of the current generation that knows exactly what Jan Jansen is all about and is inspired by his art and craftmanship. In fact, if we had still used carrier pigeons, they would be flying here all over the place, delivering messages from students and upcoming designers who’d love to work with Jan or want to use his legacy as their graduation subject. They want to learn from the best and who can blame them?
One of them is Ellen Deinum. She’s a student at the Dutch Shoe Academy in Utrecht and she’s in her final year. Ellen is determined on making six shoe designs, sparked by former collections of Jan Jansen. Because of Jan’s busy schedule, he is not able to mentor Ellen on a weekly basis. But he promised to contribute to her learning process. How? Ellen will present her six shoe designs to both Jan Jansen and her professor. Then, all three will pick out three models Ellen will put into production for her final presentation/collection. Needless the say that Ellen is over the moon and so are we. And because we don’t want to miss a thing, we asked Ellen to write a blog about the learning process she’s going through. In return we’ll publish her blogs on our website, hoping it will give an extra whirl to the inspiration flow.
The Jan Jansen Effect, blog 1