Sarah Fiszel’s debut brand, Brave Pudding, is about to create a footwear revolution
Rather accidentally, Sarah Fiszel found herself in an enviable position: breezing through airport security thanks to her low-profile choice of footwear, a robust sock made from recycled cashmere and a thin-but-sturdy recycled rubber sole. “A TSA agent actually flagged me down, thinking I’d left behind my shoes,” says Fiszel, a Ralph Lauren alumna who devised the concept for her brand, Brave Pudding*, after years of altering the soles of her own slippers so that could be worn outside.
Around the same time, Fiszel was also taking stock of her sizeable collection of largely unworn cashmere socks. “I loved them but never wore them,” says Fiszel, who found that they often became pilled and stretched out of shape after only a couple of wears. Naturally, the idea came during the pandemic when the world was focused on interior comfort. “I wanted to bring that same feeling of comfort with me into the outside of the home,” Fiszel tells Robb Report. “To me there is no greater luxury than the simplicity and elegance of a cashmere sock.”
“No, really, it is a shoe! It just looks like a sock!,” says Fiszel, who prefers the term “knit shoe” to describe the design. Fiszel never set out to create a business but after selling 100 pairs of homemade prototypes thanks to an Instagram post, Veronica Beard co-founder Veronica Swanson Beard reached out and encouraged Fiszel to do so, connecting her with a technical designer. And if the concept feels a tad outré, Fiszel makes a perfectly valid point: “if you had told women and men 15 years ago that they would be wearing sneakers with suits and slip dresses, from morning gym to night out, I’m pretty sure they would have told you, you were cuckoo.”
Indeed, with women eschewing heels and men being relatively limited in their footwear options, Brave Pudding feels very much in line with how people want to dress now. “Our shoes embody where we are now and where we are heading—luxury that is comfortable and subtle,” says Fiszel, who wears hers with just about anything and believes men should do the same: “The caviar (black, though the US$380 shoes are available in six colours) are so chic with a tux. Goodbye velvet slippers and Belgian shoes.”
*For her brand’s name. Fiszel was inspired by inspired by East Hampton’s Pudding Hill Lane and the brave Revolutionary War-era housewife who boldly refused to serve her pudding to the Redcoat soldiers in 1776 and instead threw it down the hill. With Brave Pudding, she hopes to “inspire others to embrace bravery in the everyday.”
This story was first published on Robb Report USA. Featured photo by Brave Pudding
