Beach Essentials, The Martine Rose and Clarks Way

by SHOWstudio on 28 March 2025

For Clarks’ 200 year anniversary, guest creative director Martine Rose is back with the S/S 25 collection.

Martine Rose has always dressed the underdog. Since taking on the role of guest creative director for Clarks in 2023, the British-Jamaican designer has put tree huggers and subversive loners front and centre. For Rose's third collection, Rose taps into the irreverence of beach-goers, the beach being the ultimate people watching spot.

Different worlds come together in Rose's work: it's a cultural brand, just like Clarks which was founded in Somerset, England,1825. Clarks is a name found in closets far and wide; it is the go-to British school shoe and the podiatrist's choice of footwear for senior citizens, the 'champion's shoe' of Jamaica. Rose herself has worn these shoes all her life, and each seasons puts her spin on silhouettes from the archives. Endearingly, the collections are always titled Coming up Roses!

Coming up Roses! by Clarks and Martine Rose

Recontextualising familiarity is always fun in the hands of Martine Rose. For S/S 25, Rose heads to the iconic Copacabana beach with Brazil-based photographer Mariana Maltoni. The liminality of the beach against the city skyline invites in characters who sit in contrast to cliché holiday-goers, captured in Martine Rose for Clarks holiday postcards of good times had in Rio De Janeiro.

The iconic Clarks Derby, a take on the men's dress shoe, The Heel, made from layered traditional Clarks leathers updates traditional women's office shoes, and the newer Torview silhouette, turn up on the MR beach. Models relax on the promenade or pose on rocks and fishing boats under the scorching heat, complete with Martine Rose gear.

Getting down to the roots of the footwear brand's craftsmanship, formal silhouettes expose the internal tactility of the pieces with raw-edge details. Signature Martine Rose ‘mock croc’ textures brings a playfulness to Clarks familiarity in browns and dusty blues. Idiosyncratic opposites of the seriousness in the footwear all make perfect sense.