Portland and Paris feel closer than ever around here thanks to one of our newest collab partnerships.
The Portland part of the equation is, of course, us. The Paris part? PHILEO, founded by Philéo Landowski, a Parisian designer shaped by skate lifestyle and punk ethos who is known for pushing boundaries and using organic forms with futuristic design. Together, we’re creating limited-edition styles that merge outdoor utility with avant-garde fashion.
The first shoe born from this future-forward mind meld is the Targher PHILEO, which is a mash-up of two KEEN icons: the Targhee hiking boot and Jasper sneaker. Philéo brought them together with an inside-out approach – taking the functional origins of the Targhee and revealing them in unexpected ways. As Philéo puts it: “all the structural elements that we're used to playing with as footwear designers that the consumer is not used to seeing.” There’s an exposed heel counter, visible backside of leather on the tongue, and an inside-out approach to the stitching. He says making the construction visible is not just for effect, it's also to celebrate the functional side of footwear.
"There’s this kind of brutality that comes with having function exposed as much as we can."
Philéo recently stopped by our Portland headquarters to review the latest round of Targher PHILEO factory samples and collaborate on future shoes. In between design meetings, he chatted with our creative director, Cooper Gill, and shared a little more about the raison d’être behind this first chapter of KEEN x PHILEO limited-edition styles:
On what drew him to KEEN:
“The versatility of the brand. Its expressions are extremely wide, so kind of trying to find elements that we want to put together to make a vocabulary out of it. And, of course, the sustainability and the Consciously Created aspect of the brand is very interesting to me.”
On the idea for the Targher:
“I wanted to do a kind of a mix of the icons, so a mix of the Targhee and the Jasper ... can we just blend both? So that was kind of the starting point. And then it was also to give a bit of a shoe DNA to the sneaker and exposing a bit of why it's made. So like exposing the counter, which is always hidden in the shoes, and kind of raw and with a lot of hand – almost artisanal – details. And keeping its function very much alive, so it stays a comfortable shoe that you can bring anywhere.”
On the material choices:
"It’s also keeping it as close to a shoe as possible while making it working not as a shoe. Like it's still a sneaker. It would be as comfortable as one. But there's this kind of special-looking leather, which is quite interesting and feels quite a bit elevated which is good, I think. But making it monoblock. Very easy to wear and elevated conceptually.”
On the white colorway:
“I'm not very used to working with color, because I'm color blind. But I always wanted it to be a very pale yellow. Originally it was supposed to be a very, very light pistachio green, almost an off white. Now it’s like white and yellow, which is, why not?”
On the details:
“It's like exposing function. Kind of keeping things as raw as it gets. The tongue is unlined. Keeping it simple, efficient. There’s this kind of brutality that comes with having function exposed as much as we can.”
On the “book” shoebox:
“It kind of started as a joke. Yeah, I don’t really know why we did that. It kind of started just as a fun idea. It could be like the KEEN encyclopedia that we're opening slowly every season.”
The limited-edition Targher PHILEO is available in white/yellow or black here. And stay tuned for more PHILEO collab styles coming soon.
