ChattyFeet

ChattyFeet is a gift brand built on a simple observation: most adults have a playful side they rarely get to show. The brand makes character socks with illustrated faces and witty names, from Ada Shoe-Lace and Vincent Van Toe to Prof. Brian Sox and The Sockfather, designed to bring a smile the moment you kick off your shoes.

What started as an idea between friends grew into a brand stocked by MoMA, Tate, the V&A, Barbican and CaixaForum, with press in The Guardian, BBC, Timeout and The Independent. Along the way we shipped white-label collections for partners like Ed Sheeran, Tate, V&A and Warner Music, and ran collaborations with design schools where student-created characters joined the catalogue.

I co-founded ChattyWear Ltd. in May 2011 and stepped away in March 2018. In the early days the work was everything at once: shaping the business with my co-founders, visiting factories to understand production, checking quality, and building the brand from scratch. As things settled I focused on the creative side: the visual identity, the characters, packaging from concept to finished box, the Shopify storefront (built and maintained in Liquid), trade show spaces, and the photography that carried the brand across social. Designing a physical product taught me a kind of discipline I hadn’t met before. Once a box is printed, it’s printed.