Last week, Good Good Good launched the brand’s first ever footwear collaboration with Paris-based brand CALLA, spearheaded by Canadian-born, Paris-based designer Calla Haynes. I first became aware of Calla’s work in 2023, when I came across the brand’s colourful and textured slippers online. I fell in love with them immediately and have followed the brand closely since then.
After studying Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design in New York and working for several luxury houses in Paris, Calla launched her namesake label in 2009. The collection was lauded by the fashion press including Vogue and Elle, and Haynes was the subject of a profile in the New York Times. Printemps, Harvey Nichols, Isetan, Opening Ceremony and other leading luxury retailers carried CALLA. Through her label, Calla was a finalist in several design awards including the Grand Prix of Design of the City of Paris, the Dorchester Fashion Prize, and four nominations for the ANDAM Award. Placing the ready-to-wear line on hiatus in 2015, Calla focused her attention on collaborations with diverse high-end brands around the world both as a textile designer and design consultant. Her collaborative spirit inspired Calla to seek out artisans in Morocco to explore the space between European Luxury and Berber Craft. The result is “The Boucharouite Project”: initiatives that focus on two key themes of Sustainable Design – recycling textiles and supporting traditional craft. This includes an ongoing series of rugs made with female weavers, and a collection of Babouche slippers handmade in the souk of Marrakesh using upcycled vintage Boucharouite rugs.
A year after I discovered the brand, Duck Duck Goose started a relationship with Calla when founder Daniel Sher visited Paris during Fashion Week in June 2024 on our first buying and research trip in the city. Alongside our first visits to the showrooms of some of the international brands that we now stock at 120 Bree Street, Daniel also stopped by Calla’s studio in Paris’ 3rd arrondissement – a quaint and charming space in the heart of the city’s fashion district, with a strikingly similar size and feel to our flagship store in Cape Town.
Duck Duck Goose team members Daniel, Josquin and Erin with Calla at her studio in Paris in January 2025.
We placed our first order of babouches with Calla that month. Shortly after we introduced the brand to our store’s curation, we started speaking with Calla about the possibility of a collaboration between CALLA and Good Good Good, consisting of a selection of babouches made out of the off-cuts from our brands first ten years of collections which we had been hoarding since the brand’s inception in 2016. Over the past year, we sent a batch of these off-cuts to Morocco, where Calla’s network of artisans wove them into rugs before cutting them into these shoes. We are incredibly proud of this project, and we’re excited to finally see them out in the world.
This interview with Calla was conducted in August 2024, soon after we launched her brand at Duck Duck Goose. Calla had just arrived back in Canada to visit family and take a break after another busy Fashion Week in Paris. After a year of sitting on this interview and struggling to find time to transcribe the conversation, now feels like the right time to release it and give context to our latest collaboration.
J: Do you still partly live in Canada?
C: No, I’m just visiting. So, my family’s here and we have a summerhouse on the lake, which is just the most perfect place to be in the summer. We come here every summer. I’m in this old cottage on an island, on a lake, in the middle of the forest. It’s 9:30AM here right now.
J: I’m sorry for disrupting your vacation.
C: No no no, I’m still jet lagged so I’m waking up early, which is actually productive.
J: I’ve got so many questions for you and I don’t want to keep you away from your holiday in paradise too long. I read that you started making patterns and sewing at 16. Was it clear to you already that you wanted to go into the fashion industry?
C: Yeah, I think it’s the only thing I ever wanted to do, even earlier than that. I started off sewing my own clothes. And I was lucky because I learnt photoshop and illustrator pretty early on. So yeah, I was definitely pursuing my career from a very young age. That early experience in graphic design eventually led to me becoming a textile designer for luxury houses in Paris.
J: Was there anyone in your family in the industry?
C: My mom is an interior designer and my dad worked in advertising, so I think they were supportive of a creative career, but they were also very serious about it. They were like, “if you’re gonna do it, you’ve got to do it in the best way. The best school is Parsons in New York City, so you need to get in there.”
J: So when you’re 18 years old, you go off to Parsons, and then at some point you drop out, right?
C: Yeah, in my third year I was in a study-abroad program in Paris. At the end of the year I found an internship with Olivier Theyskens at Rochas, but the internship would require me working until October even though school started in September. Even my teachers told me I should drop out and take the internship because it would give me better experience. Then I had to call my parents and tell them I was going to drop out and take it. But I told them, like, Marc Jacobs apparently dropped out in his third year for an internship! And it worked out, because I got to work with Olivier for like 5 years and I got to stay in France.
J: Were your parents hesitant about it?
C: You know, Parsons is a really expensive school! It was reassuring that my teachers were telling me to do it. I mean, internships are really good working experience, and it was a young team so they were still forming positions and I found my niche in the team and became indispensable. It was really good for me.
J: Do you regret not finishing fashion school?
C: Well, in fourth year you do a full collection. I worked for Olivier for 5 years and then I left Nina Ricci, and maybe at that moment I felt like I hadn’t developed my own proper collection and vision. So, I did it on my own then, and I wasn’t sure if it would just be a portfolio to look for a new job with. I presented it during Paris Fashion Week and people were really supportive, and we got some really big orders for it, so I was like, okay, I guess I have my own collection now. It was an experiment. We set up a little showroom in Paris and I sent out a little press release, and the response was surprising. Like, Barney’s came to see it, Maria Luisa came to see it and ordered. A big department store from Canada ordered. It was amazing. I think it might have come from how respected Olivier was and because I worked for him for 5 years.
J: You’d go on to release 10 collections in 5 years between the start of the brand in 2010, and when I look at the contrast between what you’re producing now and what you were producing then and the difference in seasonality, I want to ask you want prompted you to close that chapter of your career and if it had anything to do with becoming disenchanted with the structure of the industry and its calendar?
C: I think when you’re an independent designer, you can only go on for so long before you need an amazing business partner or a really large cash injection. Even if the collection is growing and you’ve got new clients, that means bigger orders, more investment into production, while also making a new collection at the same time. So, there’s a cash flow problem that hits you at a point, and I was getting really burnt out. I was doing 2 collections a year, and people were telling me I needed to do 4 collections a year, and make more products. Looking back, I can’t believe we had so many categories – denim, knit, jersey, dresses, suiting, like it was everything – and I was just one person! So, it was just not sustainable in so many different ways – I think we arrived at a saturation point in the industry at that point. I was also confronted with how much waste and overproduction there was in the industry. I didn’t want to be a part of it and I started re-evaluating what I really loved about fashion, which was, like, staying up late at 16 and sewing a dress all by myself. That’s what’s beautiful and noble about the industry – that craft and the care of handwork.
J: When you closed the brand, how did it feel? Were you relieved?
C: No, I felt terrible. It felt like a big failure, like closing the door on a dream. It was really sad. I think we’re all sensitive, and we put so much of ourselves out there and risk so much and work so hard on something that’s our own. I’m proud of what I did. Now, with enough time and therapy, I can say that there were great learning experiences. While the end result wasn’t what I dreamed of, I learnt so much.
During the entire time of my collection, I was also consulting and designing textiles for other people which was a way to bring in cash which went straight into the business, so I had that as a backup. When I started cleaning out my office, I realised how much fabric was left over. So, starting the rug project was like a way of mourning the collection, saying goodbye and trying to wrap everything up.
J: Did you plan to pick the brand back up again later on?
C: What we’re doing now is really accidental. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but I knew I had to do something meaningful with all this fabric so that it wouldn’t all be for nothing.
J: How soon after the close of the brand did you start your rug project?
C: It took about two years. In 2016 and 2017, I was communicating back and forth with the weavers, sending them a little bit of fabric, getting a rug back, and so on. And then in Spring of 2017, we did an exhibition in Paris where we hung them like pieces of art during the Designer’s Days Festival. It was really therapeutic. I wanted to do it as a project to spread awareness about textile waste. And then I realised that people don’t buy rugs in the same way they buy fashion – for most people it’s like 1 rug every 20 years. Then I was invited to Canada to do an exhibition of the rugs at this luxury department store that was trying to do more sustainable projects, and I knew it would be an event with all these ladies, and maybe if I had a smaller product that represented the rug project, they would snap it up and buy it. So, we made 60 pairs of babouche and I sold 60 pairs in the first hour of the show. So, I was like, maybe this is a fun project now, and the idea of a mono-product felt so much less stressful. And then, yeah, the babouches took off really accidentally.
J: How did you find out about the artisans in Morocco? Had you travelled there?
C: I hadn’t! I had no personal connection to Morocco, except that I just found those rugs so beautiful, especially as a textile designer. I was so attracted to that technique, and their look and the patterns. It happened completely by luck. I was researching Moroccan rugs on Etsy or another website like that and I contacted a bunch of people asking them whether we could make some rugs from luxury silks and wools from France. Most people thought it was the weirdest thing, because technically the traditional rugs are rag rugs, made out of old bedsheets, old clothes, ripped up pieces of cloth. Finally I met Monsif, a Moroccan man who had moved back there from London to be with his family. He was the Etsy dealer who became my production manager. He understands both the Western and the Moroccan mindset, so he’s the perfect go-between for everything now. I wouldn’t be able to do my business without him. He’s the most amazing partner. He found the weavers for me. The first group of women who wove the rugs were his cousins in a really inaccessible village that he drove two and a half hours to visit each time. It was all happening by correspondence, and then I went to visit them after about a year.
J: Had you started doing the babouches by then?
C: No, only on my second trip did we go and meet the shoemaker. Monsif also helped me find a the shoemakers’ workshop in Marrakech. It’s always been the same man making the shoes, and now I go to visit him regularly.
J: Does he have a team?
C: It started with him just working alone, but now he’s employed his brother, and his son graduated from high school last year and has joined the family business. I’m really proud to have given him so much work that he’s been able to grow his business. We’re taking it slow, but growing step-by-step.
J: How often do you speak with him?
C: Ahmed doesn’t speak English. I think he can speak a bit of French but he pretends he doesn’t. I speak only with Monsif and we’re on WhatsApp all day long. He goes and sees Ahmed and he deals with the logistics of shipping the shoes to me. When I’m not in Morocco, he also helps us source vintage rugs. Sometimes I’ll just get like 70 beeps on my phone and it’ll be Monsif sending me pictures of rugs, and then I get to go rug shopping.
J: It’s like you’re back on Etsy!
C: Yeah!
J: So, are all the shoes made out of these genuine old rugs? Or are you still making shoes out of your offcuts?
C: So, we do it in 2 ways. It started off just with the vintage rugs, and while the one-of-a-kind idea is really fun, there are some clients that need a bit more consistency. For example, an online shop might want all of the shoes just in one colour. So, that’s when we started turning our custom rugs into shoes. I do this one version called the Mono Niki, a one colour babouche, where I’ll collect a big bunch of black fabrics, for example, from my archive and from all my connections in the fashion industry in Paris, and then I’ll send a huge bundle of 20 black fabrics which they mix up and turn into one black rug, and then we’ll make the shoes with that. They’re really pretty, like extra fluffy. Those take longer to produce because of the extra rug-making, so they’re at a slightly higher price point.
J: Are you still making rugs?
C: Yeah, we do custom ones for customers, and we also just did a run of small ones, which I still need to get on the website. You just reminded me. We’ve done some collaborations. We did one with a friend who’s a painter, where we interpreted his painting into a rug. We don’t do it as much, because the shoes have really taken over. They’re about 90% of the business now, but we try to keep the rugs alive because they’re like the brand’s origin.
J: Did you think about changing the name once you pivoted to this current direction for the brand?
C: I didn’t change the name because I wanted to recycle all the hang tags and stuff, and all the clothing tags now go in the shoes. We didn’t do a rebranding, and I think it’s okay to just pivot. It’s what most brands should be doing, pivoting into a more sustainable way of doing something. I thought that the Boucharouite Project could just be a project under the brand name. I designed my logo in 2010 based on a Godard film opening sequence, and I wanted it to be timeless.
J: I read that the inspiration behind your textile designs came from the natural world and that the clothes themselves were inspired by different archetypes of creative women, like an abstract painter or an LA model. Does any of that still ring true for the brand as it exists now?
C: Well, now I consider the brand to be seasonless, so I’m not designing based on seasons or themes, but I think that creative woman or person is still my muse and who I’m designing for. Like, someone who is a free thinker that appreciates these one-of-a-kind fluffy shoes. It can definitely still be the same person who is evolving and is trying to be more sustainable, trying to make better choices.
J: I wanted to ask you about your team. As someone who spent an important part of your career in a team as you did under Olivier, what is the value to you of having a team at Calla now? How big is your team? Who are they?
C: I think when I had my own brand and was working freelance, I was alone so much. In the last two years, Hannah has joined me. She’s been an amazing cheerleader, and I’ve realised that it’s so much better to have someone constantly with you, that also drives you and is always engaged. She definitely pushes me, which I think we all need sometimes. We’re both doing a big mix of everything and we’re like sounding boards for each other. Hannah is focusing a lot on business development. Like, we just did two trunk shows in New York that Hannah organised. Hopefully we’re gonna do one in Nice in the south of France. She’s on top of collaborations that we’re planning with different brands. I’m focusing on new product development, new creative avenues and following production. Shoes are always in production and we’re always thinking about more things to do, so it’s great sometimes to get out of that and see the big picture with Hannah.
I’ve also had some really great interns lately, who have been really enthusiastic and visually inclined, wanting to help with social media and photoshoots. It’s been really fun to do more things like that.
J: It sounds like you and Olivier created a strong working bond, considering that he took you along with him from Rochas to Nina Ricci. Were there other team members that he took along?
C: Yeah, I think there was a core team of about 5 or 6 that went with him. We were a small but mighty team. I think, when I work with my team now with my experience with Olivier in mind, I’m really open to collaboration and letting everyone shine.
J: Daniel told me when he visited your space that it was surprisingly very similar to our store, especially in its size. How long have you been there?
C: Yeah! I moved into the space in 2012. When Calla was a clothing brand, it looked like a dry cleaners, because we had bars on the ceiling with clothes everywhere. When Hannah arrived we renovated the space with her encouragement, and now I love it. We have a great organisational system now for all the babouches. I love that space, I love that neighbourhood, and I don’t want to leave it even though it is too small for us. It’s in this tiny little deadend street in the Marais, and we have a community on the street. The space is everything at once. It’s open by appointment, and we say that because it could be a disaster if someone walks in and we just received a shipment because there’ll just be shoes everywhere.
J: As a designer that used to make collections, but now exclusively makes footwear and accessories, do you have any appetite to make clothes again one day?
C: That’s what Hannah asks me every day. I think one of the rules of our brand now is that we don’t make anything new. Everything should be upcycled, recycled or reworked, so I don’t see myself making virgin garments again. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but I don’t feel like doing it right now. I think that puts us in this fun box where we’re finding new ways to work within those limitations. I have a friend in New York who deals vintage turn-of-the-century French garments, so we’re trying to work on a collaboration with him where we take some of his pieces that are just a little too damaged for resale and then figure out how to upcycle those – maybe doing some embroidery in Morocco, maybe some new dying techniques. I think those are exciting projects for me to think about rather than creating completely new garments from new materials.
J: It feels like that’s the most genuine way to go about sustainability in fashion – using things that have been in existence for a long time. What’s your take on the sustainability trend in fashion more generally?
C: At this point, I feel like any effort is a good effort. I’m not mad that H&M uses organic cotton. It’s a good step and it’s great for the organic cotton market. There’s more demand and there’ll be more supply and people moving to more organic farming practices. It sounds like a relatively good thing to me, at least. I’m not super critical. It’s a bit fragile to start criticising other people over their efforts. I try not to use the word ‘sustainable’ because you set yourself up for criticism. We’ve sold through a sustainable website before, and people said our shoes aren’t sustainable because we use leather, but vegan leather isn’t sustainable either. Our leather is the by-product of the Moroccan food industry and it’s durable. The debate can go on and on, so I don’t get too nit-picky about it.
You can shop the collaboration now on duckduckgoosestore.com and in-store at 120 Bree Street.