To found a fashion brand with no keen sense of style or prior knowledge of the industry might sound like madness. For Sébastien Kopp and François Morillion, it was merely an adventure. In 2005, the two best friends, who met as 14-year-olds at school, decided to create a trainer that respected the environment and the people in the supply chain. With zero knowledge of how to do so, they went on a worldwide field trip to every possible stop in their prospective sneaker’s production line. Veja – which is a literal translation of the Portuguese-Brazilian word for “look” and urges people to see past the aesthetic of the shoes to what they are made of – was born.
“It was an interesting year,” Kopp tells Vogue of visiting nuclear plants in China, solar panel specialists in South Africa, organic cotton growers in Brazil and Amazonia, where they eventually found a rubber cooperative in a forest on the border between Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil. Did the quest for raw, ecological materials that not only weren’t harmful to the land, but actually made it richer, ever feel like a wild goose chase? “It was easy,” Kopp says matter-of-factly. “Because when you do the things you love, it’s easy. We’ve always been interested in building something more balanced than the current capitalism.”
A trainer was deemed the item of clothing the duo felt most “at ease” working with. “I couldn’t design a sweater!” Kopp laughs. It took three months inside a factory in southern Brazil to create the first prototypes, which, upon journeying home, were snapped up at a Paris trade show by Selfridges and the former French department stores Colette and La Samaritaine within three days. Back in 2005, the word “organic”, or “bio” in French, wasn’t part of fashion’s vernacular. “Buyers found us funny,” he recalls of trying to explain to clients that the people who created the trainers were treated well. “They liked the designs, so they gave us a try.”
With just 5,000 pairs in the first batch, Kopp and Morillion had no choice but to be selective about stockists. This paid off. You’ll never see a pair of V-10s in Foot Locker, because the company believes that Vejas are owed the time to be explained to shoppers by the people selling them. “We chose concept stores that sold products that were a bit strange or different, because we thought it would be a good place to sell – and then we grew slowly.”
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