Monkuniverse reimagines walking with its Monk (bare) Foot

The brainchild of Giacomo Gallina, a fashion and footwear designer with nearly twenty years’ experience in the luxury sector, the launch of the Monk (bare) Foot project sees the brand introduce a lightweight, high-quality shoe, designed to revolutionise the concept of walking in line with the philosophy of emptiness and meditation in motion.

The brand name encapsulates its very essence: ‘Monk’ evokes the figure of the monk, whilst the concept of ‘Mu’ – the answer to an ancient Japanese koan meaning ‘nothing’ or ‘emptiness’ – manifests as a creative force, the true origin of every generative process.

The Monk (bare) Foot project translates this philosophy into a physical experience that simulates walking barefoot, an ancient Zen meditation practice. To recreate the sensation of natural contact with the ground, the shoe features the Vibram FF Cup sole: an ultra-thin shell, just a few millimetres thick, made of ‘zero-drop’ rubber (with no height difference between heel and toe). The extraordinary flexibility of this component is combined with the excellence of Italian craftsmanship. The upper, made from genuine full-grain leather, is stitched directly to the rubber sole, whilst the insole is made from genuine leather. Production is entirely entrusted to a small artisanal shoe factory in the Veneto region, a guardian of the ‘Made in Italy’ tradition.