Annie Purdy: Sustainable Footwear Designer and Shoemaker

Annie Purdy is an innovative London-based footwear designer, artist, and shoemaker whose practice sits at the intersection of sustainability, feminist expression, and material commentary. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion, and the Royal College of Art, Annie Purdy has established herself as a leading voice in the resurgence of British footwear design. Her work is characterized by a playful yet critical approach to consumption, utilizing post-consumer waste found along British coasts and trails to challenge traditional notions of handmade footwear. A central piece of her portfolio is the Hot Girls Hike collection, a graduate research project that reimagines the experiences of women in the outdoors. Through this body of work, Annie Purdy explores the community formed by women who hike, run, and camp, while physically reconstructing shoes from discarded materials such as broken hot water bottles, damaged kites, and weathered tents. This commitment to circular economy principles earned her the Sustainable Development Prize at the 2023 Cordwainers Footwear Awards and the Portuguese Footwear Graduate Award in 2025. Working from her studio in London, Annie Purdy continues to broaden the horizons of performance and luxury footwear. By treating waste materials as a storytelling medium, she highlights themes of resilience and adaptability. Her collaborations, including a capsule collection with APICCAPS showcased during London Fashion Week, emphasize the potential for high-quality, responsible manufacturing that repurposes deadstock and hiking-related debris into functional art.