Black Suede Studio

Black Suede Studio

Kris Avakian launched Black Suede Studio out of Montreal in 2018, after years spent inside his family's accessories manufacturing business, including a stint running quality control at their factory in Qingdao, China. The label's whole premise was closing a gap he saw in footwear: shoes with real quality and comfort at a level nobody else was hitting, a conviction strong enough that he later moved production to Brazil to get the craftsmanship right.

Shoes

Footwear was Avakian's opening move, and it is still the clearest expression of what he was chasing: heeled, structured shoes built to read polished without announcing themselves. He grew up around a family accessories business, which is a strange but useful training ground for someone who ended up obsessing over lasts and leather. The shapes below lean toward the pointed, the strappy, the slightly severe.

More Shoes

A second wave of the same instinct, heavier on evening silhouettes and texture play. The brand's early manufacturing lived in China before Avakian shifted it to Brazil specifically to chase better construction, a decision he has been vocal about in interviews. That restlessness about quality shows up here as much as the styling does.

Still more Shoes

By this point in the edit, a pattern emerges: fewer conservative pumps, more shoes with an opinion, mules and sandals that do something unexpected with a strap or a heel shape. It tracks with a founder who came up watching how mass retailers develop product and decided he wanted more personality than that pipeline usually allows. Nothing here is trying to disappear into a capsule wardrobe.

Even more Shoes

The last shoe grouping is where the brand's Sex and the City-adjacent sensibility is most obvious, tall boots and going-out heels built for a night that has somewhere to be. Avakian has said the brand exists because he saw a void in footwear for people who wanted personality without a fashion-house learning curve. These pieces are the argument for that void being real.

Accessories

Belts and fashion jewelry are the newer chapters of the label, added as Avakian expanded beyond footwear, reportedly inspired by memories of watching his own mother transform an outfit with the right accessory. It is a logical extension for someone whose family already made jewelry and accessories for other brands before he had one of his own. The category is small here but clearly considered.

More from the collection

The rest of the edit rounds out the label's current range, the pieces that do not fit neatly into shoes or accessories but still carry the same throughline of confident, slightly maximalist shapes. Black Suede Studio now sits in more than seventy retailers globally, which says something about how quickly the idea traveled beyond Montreal. What is here is a snapshot of a young brand still adding rooms to the house.

Our honest take

Black Suede Studio is a genuinely fast success story, built less on romance than on a founder who understood manufacturing before he understood design, which is an unusual and honestly smart way in. The shoes are confident rather than quiet, which will not suit everyone, but that is clearly the point rather than an accident. It reads as a brand that knows exactly which shopper it is for.