Designs for All > Up, Closed & Personal: Velcro

Some of our first lessons on social behavior consist in learning how to watch the time on our wrist watches. Another lesson is to learn how to tight our shoelaces. Relating both gestures doesn’t always became successful, for there are people who don’t ever get to tight their laces on time. Some people don’t develop the ability to do it and others don’t simply have physical attitudes to be able to do so. Related to the will of creating a design for all, appears especially adequate for sport shoes, the Velcro system. Both sport shoes and jackets may be closed today by pulling and sticking these complementary magic bars. Today we may say that we all can “velcro up” our shoes on time. In 1941 the Swiss engineer George de Mestral, could not get rid of the alpine thistles hooked on his pants after a walk in the mountains. He analyzed how the positive and negative of the textile and the fruits were clipped together, and he also noticed that the same thing happened with his dog’s hair and the alpine flower. After studying those facts he invented Velcro.
Adidas sport shoes and Nordica ski boots use similar systems to the Velcro nexus starting in the eighties. Prada created a street shoes collection with Velcro systems in the beginning of the XXIst century. Raf Simons created suprematist shoes with Velcro décor about 2006. Two poles adhesive strings are used in various types of contemporary clothing embracing a wide range of qualities and prizes. They are also applied to design security belts; specific proposes chairs, suspenders for adaptable pools, corsets, knees adjustable systems and various sanitary bands.

• Neoprene, Gore-Tex and Velcro are the most wanted materials to design garments for open air sport activities.

• After Prada’s Velcro shoes in 1999, the tendency was followed by Balenciaga, Hogan, Dior. It became a sales and specialized critic success.