Fairfax & Favor Design Competition

The Cinderella fairy tale has always been a wonderful story for footwear brands: it proves that a pair of shoes can change your life. Buy one, leave one strategically dropped outside a palace, and get a true love for free!

But we were always far more interested in the fairy godmother. How much fun is her job, right? She gets to flit in, design an impossible pair of shoes which nobody will ever be able to create again, and then watch as her glass slippers bring two people together.

Working at Fairfax & Favor sometimes feels a little like fairy godmothering. We get the chance to design beautiful things, create them, send them out into the world, and then hear about how confident and happy and marvellous they make people feel. We hear about you wearing your Rockingham ankle boots to job interviews; slipping your Apsley loafers on for work when you need a little motivation; showing off your Jaguar Henley driving shoes when you pick up your children from school; zipping up our Regina’s for a first dates… or even underneath your wedding dresses.

Your Challenge

We want to invite you to experience this magical feeling, to take part in the excitement of being a Fairy Godmother for a little while. We challenge you to design a product for us, and for our customers from around the world.

Here at Fairfax & Favor we love how open our communication is with our customers. You have guided our style and brand since the beginning. So we thought, what better way to ease the lockdown blues (ours as well as yours) than to challenge you to a design competition?

Last Year’s Fairy Godmother…

… was a complete success. The winner, Daisy, came up with a truly classy pair of navy sandal style heels.

Here is what our co-founder Felix Favor Parker had to say about the process of last year’s competition,

‘We have always looked to our customers to understand what they would like to see from us. When we went into lockdown last year we thought it might be fun to start a design competition. We were staggered by the response and the talent of our customers: there were over 500 entries. Trying to narrow it down to the top 20 was extremely difficult. We eventually whittled them down to 20 and let our customers vote for the one they liked most, and Daisy’s entry won. We absolutely love the design and in the end even decided to name the shoe after her. The first pair off the production line went to Daisy, along with a £500 gift card.

We enjoyed seeing our customers’ entries so much the we have decided to do it again this year. I look forward to seeing the designs this year and feel this may just be a competition we do each year.’

Why you'd fall in love with the Daisy Heel

1. The tassel, obviously! How incredibly sassy is a little red tassel with a matching toe-strap insert? From the front or the back, this shoe makes a statement
2. The padded comfort insole, designed to ensure that your new look also looks after your feet (glass slippers would certainly not have been this comfortable)
3. The chevron buckle for that glint of gold
4. The Signature shield, another Fairfax & Favor defining classic

But what does Daisy think of Fairy Godmothering?
“I am still pinching myself that I can hold these let alone wear them. I can’t thank the team at Fairfax & Favor enough for creating such a lovely opportunity to put our design ideas forward especially during such a challenging time with lockdowns, it provided a very welcome distraction for me to get creative. After sending it in I really thought that would be it but to then see the design shortlisted and receive a positive reaction from people really was amazing.

Thank you so so much to everyone that took the time to vote, leave feedback and kind comments, I hope you love the finished product, I really couldn’t be happier with how they have turned out. Lauren has done the most fantastic job of bringing the concept to life, it has been great having discussions with her about the design and a little insight into how much time, work and effort goes into the products. I am really looking forward to seeing how people style them so do tag me in your photos and let me know what you think (@daisyydot).”

Find the Daisy here in Tan & Navy or Navy & Red!