‘Once the shoes get you there’s no escape’: Claire Burrows on how she set up Air & Grace

Claire Burrows felt as if she was ‘making stuff that didn’t need to be made’. So in 2014 she bravely ditched the nine-to-five job and set up Air & Grace, writes Andy Martin

Claire Burrows says her shoes are designed to be comfortable without sacrificing style (Air & Grace)

There is nothing more miserable than a day in uncomfortable shoes,” says Claire Burrows. If you’re a woman, her shoes, Air & Grace, are designed to save you from that sorry fate. But without having to sacrifice style.

Burrows has now been in shoes for 25 years, but she didn’t set out to be a shoemaker. By the age of 18 she was making all her own clothes to go out clubbing in and went to the London College of Fashion on Oxford Street. “We were all wearing DMs back then,” she says. She was six feet tall and definitely didn’t need heels. “I never really considered shoes. I thought I’d be a clothing buyer,” she says. But her first job was with Office footwear and she was hooked. “Once the shoes get you there’s no escape.”

She went from working for the likes of Kurt Geiger and Oasis to Fitflop. “It was like you had to choose: style or comfort. I wanted to do both.” She didn’t like the bulky, ergonomic look, the dreaded “orthopaedic” shoe. But she had also fallen out of love with high-street fashion. “I didn’t like the disposability of fashion. I felt it was wrong. A good shoe is always good. It’s timeless. It shouldn’t have a sell-by date.”

Burrows felt as if she was “making stuff that didn’t need to be made”. So in 2014 she bravely ditched the 9 to 5 job and set up Air & Grace. She got off to a flying start by winning a “best new retail start-up” competition run by Seedrs and Metro, received a prize of £150,000 investment, and got further backing from Michael Acton Smith of Calm and Mind Candy. Since then it’s been a steady 70 per cent growth year on year.

Her shoes can be found on the feet of celebs and movie stars such as Helen Mirren and Fearne Cotton. And they are so coveted that she once had a lorry-load of trainers hijacked by bandits. So she must be doing something right. But Air & Grace don’t do fads. “We don’t want to do something where you go, ‘What on earth was I thinking when I bought those shoes?’” She admits to having made her share of poor choices. “I’ve spent so much money on shoes that have never seen the light of day.” But she is all the more determined no one else should have a wardrobe of shoes that they never wear.

“The woman who wears my shoes is fashion-conscious. But she is leading a busy life, so she needs to be able to run around. How many times have I left the house, got to the tube station – and regretted my shoe choice?” Burrows is like an anti-Imelda Marcos. “Buy fewer, buy better” is her slogan. “You could buy three pairs of £50 shoes for one pair of ours – but most of them would end up in landfill.” Rather than bargain hunting and shoes that fall apart, you should be looking out for “pounds per wear”. Burrows scorns discounting and on Black Friday of 2020 she put her “Repurpose Collection” on sale – made from what would otherwise have gone to waste – and achieved their highest ever one-day sales.

Shoes can now be thoroughly plant-based, made out of grapes and pineapple. People are even tanning banana leaves

Here is the thing that really impressed me about Claire Burrows: she is very hands-on. She is actually holding one of her “lasts”, the moulds that define the shape and volume of a shoe (which enables her to utter the rather Biblical-sounding, “We make the last first”). Her designs are pinned up on the cork board behind her head. She is feeling the material and testing it and cutting it. Burrows, it turns out is a skiver – or possibly the opposite. I used to use the word for bunking off school; when she is “skiving” she is not shirking work but rather carefully trimming edges from thick to thin with a sharp knife.

The secret to the wearability of Air & Grace is its patented “Tender Loving Air” footbed, hidden inside the shoe. It’s what you can’t see that makes the difference. Burrows kindly deconstructed the shoe for me. There are three different densities of foam that provide shock absorption, memory, and recovery. Each layer is “die cut” by hand. “People used to laugh at me in shoe factories. ‘That’s stone-age! It’s too labour-intensive,’ they said. But it was the only way we could make something that is comfortable but also thin. Otherwise you end up with a thick shoe.”

Having had a small taste of how painful “plantar fasciitis” can be, I can definitely see the logic of the well-structured shoe. I’m not that worried about the magic trainers that enable you to run faster, but I would like to be able to take the dog for walk without doing myself an injury.

Burrows is part of the “slow fashion” movement. Air & Grace shoes take up to a year to go from drawing board to ready-to-wear. And there are 250 components in every shoe. In response to customer demand, they recently developed a vegan line too. Shoes can now be thoroughly plant-based, made out of grapes and pineapple. People are even tanning banana leaves. “We’re trying to use the most natural products,” says Burrows. “But they have to be durable too. We’re old school, using canvas and fibres. But we are constantly looking at new materials.”

Claire Burrows says that 2020 was “a great year for sandals”. Shoes are getting chunkier this year. “Everyone is walking a lot more, no one wants to totter around on heels.” But, conversely, she is fully expecting a revolt, in the direction of dressy and away from perpetual gym gear. “Fashion is often an equal and opposite reaction,” she says. So she is bringing back heels and building up in incremental stages. At present she is working on a mid-height heel, but ultimately she is looking to create what she calls her “holy grail: a comfortable high heel”.

@andymartinink