nicay-x-the-wearness

Already as a child, Nicole Altar learned to sew in her grandparents' tailor shop and to value good material, workmanship and timeless cuts. Above all, her grandmother's credo "Without a good shoe, even the most beautiful dress looks like nothing" has accompanied her ever since.
However, she first studied business administration and linguistics and worked in the international business sector. During this time she made her first contacts with manufacturers in Italy and Spain who now produce the shoes.
In 2004 Nicole founded her label NICAY in Zurich. Her own desire to find the perfect shoe, which combines style, good material, high-quality workmanship and comfort, shapes the entire NICAY collection today.
For Nicole it was clear: good design, high-quality material and workmanship, form and function must go hand in hand. After all, she is firmly convinced that good style is ultimately based on functionality and not on decoration. Every little detail is important to her. Her shoes are not only designed to be visually appealing, but also to be comfortable to wear.

Only when the material, workmanship and look of a shoe harmonise they will become a favourite pieces.

Fair production and sustainability have been key concerns from the very beginning.
Nicay only uses vegetable-tanned leather, which is humanely tanned in an environmentally friendly way with extracts from valonea, oak bark and tara fruit, and is free of chrome and heavy metals.
They source the leather from the Consorzio Vera Pelle in Tuscany, an association of tanneries to preserve traditional vegetable tanning with state-of-the-art standards for environmental protection, and from the family-owned company Ecopell in southern Germany. The leather is organic, IVN natural leather and ECARF certified.
The hides for the fish leather tanned in Bischofsmais come from certified organic salmon farms with species-appropriate husbandry and are a by-product of the food industry.
Joh. Rendenbach's leather soles, which are most commonly used for the shoes, are tanned in Nicole's hometown of Trier since 1871 using the sustainable Eichenloh pit tanning process.
Some of the shoes have a rubber sole from the Italian manufacturer Vibram. Here the sustainability aspect is not directly in the material, but in the durability and slip resistance of the sole - after all, durability and ease of repair are important aspects of sustainability.
All Nicay products are fair, high quality and handmade in small batches. The traditional handicraft businesses in Germany, Italy and Spain are already in their 3rd and 4th generation.
The design of the shoes is always minimalist and timeless. The handwork and the material is high quality and durable. Nicay guarantees shoes beyond mass production and fast-moving fast fashion.

In cooperation with "the wearness", we have jointly developed THE BOOT.