Olyene Labs is Olyene’s research and innovation laboratory, where designers, scientists, technicians, and footwear specialists collaborate on the development of materials, technologies, and new product solutions.
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Designer
They give shape to desire, transforming radical ideas into objects of beauty, function, and meaning.
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Farmers
They connect the project to the land, cultivating natural resources and agricultural intelligence at the base of the materials.
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Botanists
They decode plant intelligence, guiding the use of natural fibers, dyes, extracts, and regenerative material sources.
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Tanners
They transform raw hides through responsible craftsmanship, bringing vegetable-tanned leather to life with depth, softness, and character.
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Engineers
They translate experimentation into performance, ensuring that every innovation can work, last, and be produced responsibly.
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Artisans
They give the product its human touch, perfecting each construction, finish, and detail with expert hands.
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Chemists
They are reinventing the material process, developing cleaner, lower-impact tanning, dyeing, finishing, and bonding systems.
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Scientists
They measure, question and validate impact, helping to constantly increase the postive impact our Olyene’s innovations.
Total Pleasure
Beauty, comfort, and desire are part of the responsibility, not something to give up. Olyene was created to offer an authentically desirable aesthetic, physical, and emotional experience.
Living Material
Oleum® leather, natural fibers, and materials rich in character create a sensory experience made of softness, scent, touch, and patina. A shoe that adapts, transforms, and becomes more personal over time.
Cleaner Chemistry
Vegetable tanning, plant-based dyes, and water or starch-based adhesives rethink how the shoe is treated, colored, and constructed, prioritizing cleaner processes compatible with natural materials.
Designed to Return to Nature
Every component is selected and developed with the aim of promoting its biodegradability and, where possible, compostability. The goal is a safe end-of-life, without phytotoxic residues in the soil.
Designed to Live and Evolve
Durability, repairability, and the ability to improve with use extend the relationship with the product. Olyene is not meant to remain perfect, but to acquire character and be lived in longer.
Made by Italy
Designers, farmers, scientists, tanners, artisans, and innovators work as a single system. Culture, territory, research, and Italian manufacturing become a visible part of the product.
Compromises
Designed out, the belief that responsibility means giving up beauty, pleasure or aspiration. And also the idea of fashion that is ethical, but devoid of emotion and desirability.
Anonymous matter and sterile perfection
Designed out, where possible, generic materials, unnecessary plastic and flat surfaces that do not reveal their origin and do not change over time.
Toxic chemistry
Designed out heavy metals, aggressive treatments, reliance on solvents and unnecessary harmful residues. Less invisible chemistry, greater attention to what goes into the product and the environment.
Persistence and phytotoxic trace
Designed out components destined to remain indefinitely in the environment, persistent microplastics and materials that, by degrading, can contaminate the soil or hinder plant life.
Disposable logic
Designed out fashion built on obsolescence, rapid replacement and the linear path: take, produce, use and discard.
Closed-door production
Designed out opaque origins, invisible supply chains and isolated decisions. Olyene makes the skills, people and territories that contribute to its creation recognizable.