Story mfg. & SUICOKE's Puffy Shoes Are Artisan-Made Beauties (EXCLUSIVE)
Story mfg.’s founders, Saeed and Katy Al-Rubeyi, have worn SUICOKE shoes for years. The brains behind the British craft-based, slow fashion label would bring pairs back from trips to SUICOKE's homeland of Japan, growing especially fond of the brand’s puffy winter shoes.
“I wear this SUICOKE winter boot every single winter,” Saeed tells me over a Zoom call, hunched over his screen in a quiet corner while a photoshoot for an upcoming Story mfg. collection takes place around him. “As a designer, you always look at everything you have and think about what you would change if it was your thing.”
After visiting each other's showrooms and waxing lyrical about each other's brands, what Saeed refers to as the “normal fashion flirting,” Story mfg. and SUICOKE have finally made their love official through a collaboration. And Saeed has reimagined his favorite padded winter shoe, the Story mfg. way.
The SUICOKE BOWER-TRab-ECO, a new, more environmentally friendly take on the boot Saeed bought years ago, and its low-top counterpart, the PEPPER-TRab-ECO, are dressed in a rustic, handmade fabric.
“There are many things we do where the evidence of the handwork is kind of not visible, it just looks like lovely fabric, but with this one [used on the SUICOKE shoes], you can really see every hand movement in the product. The fabric has a really chunky, interesting waffle,” Saeed tells me before diving into the work of the craftspeople in Thailand who produce the material.
Behind every Story mfg. product is a fascinating tale of slowly dying crafts kept alive in small communities. Its SUICOKE collaboration is no different.
Rubber tree farmers by day, a group of people in Sakon Nakhon, Northeast Thailand, continue an ancient tradition of hand spinning, hand weaving, and naturally dying. Using cotton grown by small homesteaders, most of them have looms in their own homes while others meet at a local village hall to use the ones there.
“It’s a bit of a side hustle for most of them. But it's also a social thing, kind of like an anthropological thing,” says Saeed. He’s been working with these craftspeople in Thailand for years, first using their checkered fabric for hand towels, then progressing into jackets, and, now, shoes. It’s becoming a core fabric for the brand, utilized for suiting in an upcoming collection.
Its dedication to slow fashion, championing environmentally conscious and artisanal production methods, is a big part of what sets Story mfg. apart. The fact its methods are entirely contrary to the wider fashion industry is both commendable and a sign of fashion’s dying appreciation of beautiful handmade clothing.
“Fashion houses in the past were patrons of the arts for these kinds of artisans. There'd be seamstresses in some small place in Italy that were completely kept alive only by orders from the big fashion houses,” says Saeed. “The idea [with Story mfg.] was always to find the last vestiges of dying crafts and interesting things.”
Increasingly, Story mfg. has been bringing its distinctive perspective to the world of sneakers. This SUICOKE collaboration is part of three sneaker collaborations in its Spring/Summer 2025 collection, the others being a rugged ROA outdoor shoe released last month and an upcoming old-school running shoe with ASICS. Its new SUICOKE collection releases on September 27 via both brand’s websites and select retailers.
Three sneaker collaborations in quick succession, is Story mfg. planning rapid growth through big-name sneaker collaborations? That isn’t how this family business works. All these collaborations have been a long time coming, Saeed tells me, and coincidentally the timing on all three lined up so they could be part of one collection.
“Story mfg. is a family business, it's mine and Katy's,” says Saeed. “It's really small, it's grown excruciatingly slowly, and it will continue to grow excruciatingly slowly. That's all we want, the best thing that can happen [at Story mfg.] is not much change at all.”
