Donohoe launched quietly in December with five jewel-toned slides and a few stoles that earned an immediate cult social following; she considers the five new retro pop shades, which dropped online today, to be her official debut, inspired by L.A. itself.Zizi Donohoe is a self-fashioned style pioneer. Beneath the fluttering palm leaves and ever-present sunshine of Los Angeles, the British designer is making the case for everyday decadence with an extravagant proposal—that you pick up a pair of plush mink slides from her namesake brand and wear them quite literally anywhere. “They’re really indulgent,” Donohoe says, laughing. “But I’ll absolutely go to the grocery store in them.” The 24-year-old is a fairly recent transplant from Sheffield, where she grew up, and London’s Shoreditch neighborhood, where she studied shoe design and fashioned the first pairs of slides from leftover skins—baby blue for her boyfriend, acid “tennis ball” green for herself. Once personal orders began flooding in from friends, Donohoe found, to her own surprise, that she had a hit. “I thought there wasn’t enough design behind it, but then I realized it was a really easy, but fabulous thing,” she says. “Instead of a sneaker, why not wear a mink slide and go to 7-Eleven or dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel?” Donohoe launched quietly in December with five jewel-toned slides and a few stoles that earned an immediate cult social following; she considers the five new retro pop shades, which dropped online today, to be her official debut, inspired by L.A. itself. Done in pale flamingo pink, cream, and pearl gray, the dreamy palette, she explains, was drawn from the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, while the bolder lilac and yellow models were plucked from camp ’80s films. “Troop Beverly Hills, Pretty Woman, Down and Out in Beverly Hills—everything was hideously saturated,” she says. Yet transferred onto mink, they work wonders.
POST: 2024-04-19