Zalando is the strictest marketplace in fashion, and the one that rejects most. A shoe line had to go live there, and the brand was in another country: nobody was coming to the studio.
What had to be right
Patent that reads as patent. It’s the hardest material in footwear: it returns the whole room, and without reflection control the shoe comes out with the studio drawn across it.
The mandatory angle set on every pair, same framing, shadow in the same place, so the collection reads as one.
The buckle and the stitching legible up close — that’s where a shoe looks expensive or looks cheap.
The exact colour. A dark green can come out black under the wrong light, and the customer returns what she wasn’t expecting.
How it went
The shoes arrived by courier and were checked pair by pair before anything was shot. The brief was settled by email — no calls, no meetings, no trip to Barcelona.
Each material got its own lighting set-up. Patent and the rubber of the sole don’t resolve under the same light.
We sent the first pairs for approval before shooting the rest, so the criteria were fixed by the brand and not assumed by us.
The result
The full angle set for every pair, files named by reference and adjusted to Zalando’s specifications. Accepted on the platform, uploaded without reworking anything.
