the upcycled shoes that are all over my instagram feed

At 25 years old, Nicole McLaughlin has built a huge following for her upcycled clothing and shoe creations while working as a graphic designer for Reebok full-time.

Briefly, Nicole studied language at school before deciding her true passion was design - she then went onto do a degree in art where she landed herself a graphic design internship in Reebok. She knew nothing about shoes so spent much of her spare time researching and learning about footwear, hypebeasts and teaching herself all sorts. Currently, she has a place at the Adidas Brooklyn Creator Farm, a graduate programme that helps designers develop their skills. There she has access to machinery such as 3-D printing, which has helped her create the insane creations seen on her instagram.

Nicole taught herself to sew and started the beginning stages of her upcycled clothing project. While the designs re use old and unused items for a new purpose, sustainability wasn’t at the front of her mind when she first started creating.

In an interview with i-D McLaughlin said “I think the best part is that I didn’t even know that I was being sustainable, I was just finding old clothes because they were cheaper and because then I felt less bad about cutting them up,” she says. “People often think that sustainable solutions have to look a certain way and to be able to change people's minds and show people that these things can look interesting has been so cool.”

McLaughlin’s designs are playful, and often involves reshaping and repurposing strange sporting equipment into the shape of a shoe. With the message behind her work being to make fun at how serious major fashion brands take themselves - when really the world would be a little bit better if everyone took themselves a little less seriously.

What I really like about Nicole McLaughin's work is that people often think that sustainable solutions have to look a certain way and to be able to change people's minds and show people that these things can look interesting. We see a lot of sustainability talk in beauty and organic brands but its rare that we see more 'hype' brands such as Supreme, North face etc talking about these things so I think McLaughin is making a really interesting stand that you can still be cool and on trend when recycling.

For me personally though, I think I am more drawn to her work which uses more mundane objects - e.g. beach balls and camera straps - I think the familiarity of the objects being mixed up and used in such an obscure way and still be aesthetically pleasing is really fun.

McLaughlin’s designs are currently not for sale, wanting to take a stand that “not everything you see on Instagram you need to own.” Keeping them as more of an art form, she is open to collaborations in the future, but never sees it being her own “brand.”