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Addict Vegan Slippers

• February 2014
• Hi Steph Climb Vegan

Hi Steph,
As a climber and a vegan I have become interested in your blog. I know you have become involved with Evolv recently and just wanted to know why they are gravitating toward making so many shoes that contain leather now. I was especially looking forward to the Evolv Addict for a vegan crack climbing slipper but recently found out it is leather. I would have expected this shoe to be vegan friendly with you being involved in its development. I did buy a pair of bandits and they work great for hand cracks. What do you think is the best vegan crack shoe? Anyway, thanks for promoting veganism and let me know what you think about all of this.
Thanks,
Kevin

Hi Kevin,
I’m glad you wrote because I have been working with Evolv since 2012 on the Addict slipper, and I’m so excited that it’s finally coming to fruition! The good news is that this project is nearing completion…and you still have the vegan Addict to look forward to 🙂

Evolv has always been one of the more vegan friendly shoe options–they were awarded PETA’s “Proggy Award” in 2005 for being the best cruelty-free outdoor shoe company. We knew one of the biggest challenges with a slipper intended for crack use as well as face climbing was going to be making it in a synthetic, vegan option. With leather, you can make an unlined shoe that conforms to your foot, stretches slightly and takes the shape of your foot, and also protects the top and sides of your foot from pressure and friction in cracks. The synthetic fabrics that have been used for rock shoes so far are always thin (thus causing pain when feet are stuffed in cracks) and need to be lined, which changes the feeling of the upper and doesn’t let it stretch and mold to your foot. This is often actually good in a face shoe, but doesn’t work at all for a crack slipper. So the real crux of this project has been trying to find a synthetic material that would have those characteristics.

When making a new shoe, first you have to find the right shape for the last. Our first attempt was taking the last from the Kaos (a synthetic shoe I really like for face climbing and thin cracks), and building a slipper upper onto it. Unfortunately that one didn’t climb well, and the thin, lined synthetic fabric made it really painful in cracks. Evolv tried a few more versions with the same last, because it would have been simple and great if that last had worked for the new slipper, but somehow the shape just didn’t work as a slipper rather than a velcro shoe. Next they made some with the Geshido last, but again the shape wasn’t right. We tried a few with the Astroman last, and then Evolv decided it was time to create an entirely new last for this slipper, which is how we finally got to the Addict. This last is really good–the slipper is mostly flat, with a very very slight downcamber which puts the pressure point in a great spot at the toe for face climbing, but keeps the shoe flat enough for crack climbing.

After you get the last right (and then acquire multiple lasts for every size of that shoe), you have to build the upper. You never know how it will fit when you start and it has to be done by hand, so usually Evolv would send me a single shoe to test with the first attempts, which was pretty funny to climb in.

The next step is to put on the rands and tension the arch, trying different thicknesses of rubber, and this also really affects the fit and shape of the shoe.

So all these steps were done over the last year and a half of creating the Addict.

Since we knew that leather works for this shoe, and that we did not yet have a synthetic material that would, the decision was made to produce it in leather while searching for a good synthetic fabric for the vegan version.

At the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake, we met with an innovative company called Toray who focuses on synthetic materials. Some of the fabric they have is as close to leather as anything I’ve seen in its suppleness, thickness and flexibility. Though we started talking with Toray 2 years ago and were excited to see there may be some good possibilities with fabrics, it’s only now that the new slipper is actually in existence to work off of. So now we are able to choose samples of the fabrics to start making prototypes for testing.

I was surprised to learn that a quality synthetic material that will offer similar performance and characteristics to leather may cost twice as much as leather, but this didn’t seem to phase the Evolv design team.

When they find the right material, Evolv will do a small initial production run of the vegan Addicts and then hope that sales will support this shoe, which I bet they will. Now that I have been climbing in the leather version for several months, I realize that the synthetic version is also going to have the major advantage of less stretch, so it may ultimately be the very best version of the Addict.

I’m looking forward to the next testing phase in the process, and the vegan Addict is really close.
Thanks for being patient, and for being part of the community who supports this project!
Steph