A soft, dreamlike vision takes shape in Susan Fang’s new collaboration with Melissa, where translucent textures, floral forms and a sense of wonder turn the jelly shoe into a small object of romantic futurism.
Susan Fang has always designed through feeling. In her new collaboration with Melissa, that instinct becomes something you can step into. The Brazilian brand’s glossy, translucent material sets the base for a series of shoes that feel light, nostalgic and quietly otherworldly.
Petals, gradients and soft geometries define the collection. Shapes expand around the foot in a subtle 360-degree bloom, holding that fragile balance between structure and air. The familiar language of the jelly shoe remains, but it shifts toward something more precise, almost atmospheric.
This is where romantic futurism takes form. Fang moves naturally between technology and emotion, using digital tools to create objects that still feel intimate. Together with industrial designer Orelio de Jonghe, she develops a surface that moves from opacity to transparency, allowing light to travel through the shoe as if it were part of it.
The moment feels right. Fashion is leaning back into sensation, into softness, into images that invite rather than explain. Fang’s idea of whimsy sits exactly there: a way of understanding the world through feeling first.
Melissa’s material history makes that possible. What once belonged to childhood and summer returns here with a different clarity, shaped into something more delicate, more intentional, more personal.
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