Satoshi Kondo took two pairs of shoes apart and pieced them back together like wooden blocks. The result is the Karst Finch, the second collaboration between Issey Miyake and Camper. A Mary Jane, a bubble sole, four colours, two pairs of socks in the box.
The shoe arrives in stores globally on 15 April. Pink, yellow, green, blue. Each pair ships with two pairs of socks, one matching, one contrasting. Kondo and the Camper team want the wearer to choose the mood of the day at the level of the foot.
Kondo runs the womenswear line at Issey Miyake. For the Karst Finch he and his studio worked from photo books of finches and other small garden birds. The richness of plumage gave him the palette. The subtlety of the beak gave him the edge work. The Mary Jane silhouette, soft and slightly nostalgic, holds it all together.
A piece of cloth
This is the second time Issey Miyake and Camper have made a shoe together. The first arrived for A/W 2025, a slouchy boot cut from a single piece of leather. That was a quiet nod to Issey Miyake’s ‘A Piece of Cloth’ principle, in which one length of fabric becomes the whole garment, with no waste and no second seam to argue with.
The Karst Finch keeps that thinking and turns it sideways. Kondo and the Camper team broke down existing shoes, then rebuilt them into something else. The shoe began with the hands rather than the feet. The bubble sole carries the silhouette upward. The strap reads as a quiet quotation from a Tokyo street.
Karst is the name of an original Camper shoe, after the limestone formations of central Europe. Finch is the new layer. A shoe built like geology, finished like ornithology.
The plumage gave him the palette. The subtlety of the beak gave him the edge work.
Margaux DelacroixMix and match
Two pairs of socks in the same box is a small editorial decision with consequences. The shoe shifts mood depending on the layer underneath. A pink upper with a yellow sock reads playful. A pink upper with a tonal pink sock reads composed. The pricing logic of a sweater applied to a sneaker.
The Karst Finch first appeared on the Issey Miyake S/S 2026 runway in October, slipped under the knit and pleated dressing the house has spent fifty years refining. On the show floor it read as a punctuation mark. In the store it reads as the start of a sentence.
A continuous spirit
Kondo speaks about Camper as a peer rather than a partner of convenience. Both companies care about craftsmanship, both care about how a thing is made, both think about design beyond the fashion week calendar. The shoe carries that ease in its construction.
Camper × Issey Miyake Karst Finch sneakers, available 15 April 2026. Image courtesy of Issey Miyake, via Wallpaper*.
Issey Miyake has spent decades arguing that what you wear should follow the way a body actually moves through a day. The Karst Finch is the same idea in a smaller package. A shoe that asks the wearer to make one or two small choices, then gets out of the way.