How Emerging Talent Award Winner Ancuta Sarca Carved Out a Niche With Her Sportswear Heels and Gained Cher as a Fan
On Nov. 29, Ancuta Sarca will be honored with the Emerging Talent Award at the 37th annual FN Achievement Awards. Below is an article from the magazine’s Nov. 27 print issue about the designer’s journey so far.
Romanian-born, London-based designer Ancuta Sarca had never anticipated becoming a footwear designer when she graduated with a master’s in fashion design from Art and Design University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania.
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“I started with loving clothes more than shoes and got a job in London working as a designer for Ashish for three years,” she said in an interview with FN. “But I’ve always been obsessed with making things. At that time, I was making shoes for myself to wear at home.”
A journalist discovered her distinctive designs, which resemble collaged pieces of art, rather than traditional footwear.
The shoes, which incorporate elements of sportswear and vivid colors, gained traction and she started selling small batches that she made with help from two women in Romania who had previously worked in a shoe factory.
Those designs would soon be discovered by Browns and by Fashion East, the London-based talent incubator set up by Lulu Kennedy.
“I started to sell well in the first two seasons and since then it just kept growing. We wholesale and [in October] we opened our online store. We’re trying to find new ways to grow the business,” said Sarca, who runs the business from top to bottom.
Current retail accounts include Browns as well as LN-CC and Selfridges.
“Ancuta Sarca is great because she has reimagined footwear in a unique and identifiable way,” said Ida Petersson, buying director at Browns. “Her ability to blend the sports and sustainability worlds together to create an innovative product is paving the way for circular fashion, and we love that she continues to challenge the traditional footwear category.”
Sarca said that expanding the brand is something she’s keen to do in the new year, although the creative part remains her favorite.
She makes all the prototypes by hand before sending them off to her factory. She taught herself how to make shoes by deconstructing the ones she already had. “I was really good at pattern cutting in general and at sewing,” she said.
The majority of her fabrics and materials are upcycled or recycled, and she sources them from eBay, Depop, vintage fairs, car boot sales and markets in Romania, where she travels regularly for business and to see her family.
She recalls that growing up in Romania influenced her aesthetic — especially the counterfeit sportswear she would come across in the markets, from Adidas tracksuits to Nike trainers.
Her quantities are still relatively small compared with other footwear brands.
She produces 500 pieces each season across different styles.
“I’m really into aggressive, dynamic and spiky shades — I love mixing and contrasting elements by using soft fabrics with metallic leather; masculine and feminine; vintage and modern sportswear elements, as well as luxury elements, too. I love to push something like a trainer into a completely different context by making it glamorous,” she said of her design approach.
In 2019, Nike loaned deadstock sneakers for Sarca to work with, incorporating the brand’s sporty fabrics and signature logo onto her designs. “They helped me in the beginning of my [footwear career], they gave me deadstock when I was with Fashion East,” she said.
Fans of her footwear now include Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid, Rosalía and Cher, who in 2020 tweeted that she was an Ancuta Sarca fan.
“Personally, it’s really motivating because it makes me work more and put more effort in — it just gives me that push when things are stressful and demanding. Also, it helps with sales because buyers look at these things when they’re buying,” said the 32-year-old designer.
For spring ’24, Sarca called her collection “Florii” after a Romanian Easter tradition. The designer said she was reminiscing about her carefree summers in Romania.
Embellishments included handcrafted flowers made from secondhand Nike trainers. The designer put the flowers on pointed-toe kitten-heel boots and sandals.
Among her designs for spring ’24 were pink suede clogs and brown leather knee-high boots with a tortoiseshell finish. She also created a scarlet patent shoulder bag.
During New York Fashion Week, she collaborated with designer Dion Lee on various designs using deadstock from past collections. “Their brand is so sleek and sexy. I was really into it, and I wanted to make something that worked well with their clothes, too,” she said.
Even though footwear is at the core of the Ancuta Sarca brand, the designer has already started toying with the idea of expanding into other accessories, such as handbags, and is eyeing belts and sunglasses for the future.
Sarca calls the process of making a handbag “lovely” and said it’s no different to the DIY aspect of creating footwear, fusing different ideas and shapes together without any limitations.
For 37 years, the annual FN Achievement Awards — often called the “Shoe Oscars” — have celebrated the style stars, best brand stories, ardent philanthropists, emerging talents and industry veterans. The 2023 event is supported by sponsors Authentic Brands Group, Birdies, Caleres, Crocs, FDRA, Nordstrom, Saucony and Vibram.
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