Parisian Footwear Label Christen Makes Physical Retail Debut at Bergdorf Goodman

Parisian shoe label Christen makes its physical retail debut Tuesday exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.

There are high expectations for Nina Christen’s new venture. The Chilean Swiss designer is behind some of the most talked about shoes in recent years, including Bottega Veneta’s Puddle boot from fall 2020 and its Lido sandal with its wide band of Intrecciato leather. She also cooked up Loewe’s shoe festooned with balloons and toy-like Comic Foam pumps.

Now, her namesake brand offers up understated upscale footwear fare that emphasizes materials and fit — buttery leathers, sculptural heels and an innovative custom footbed. On offer for spring 2025 are styles that include a t-strap vamp stiletto heel in lambskin leather sandals, an open-toe wedge sandal in stretch leather — and an easy flat suede slipper with a rounded toe.

These eight models, plus another four currently available on preorder, “introduce the brand’s aesthetic in its essence, emphasizing the purity of lines and singular toe shapes expressing a unique and playful classicism,” said founder and creative director Nina Christen.

“[Nina’s] exacting eye for quality and fit along with her extensive experience designing for some of fashion’s most important houses is evident in the exceptional collection,” said Bergdorf Goodman’s chief merchandising officer Yumi Shin.

The brand’s first designs, a selection of nonseasonal styles, landed on its website in September.

For as long as Christen can remember, design has always been her calling. “It was always a very clear path. I knew I wanted to know how to make things,” she said, recalling how she was making her own clothes as a pre-teen.

But despite enrolling in fashion school, where she studied tailoring and pattern-making, the designer “really didn’t have any interest in inventing ready-to-wear [models],” she said. “But shoes, I like everything from rubber boots to home slippers — everything.”

Designing a first shoe for her master’s degree at the Institut Français de la Mode cinched her future path. “I just immediately had a feeling that it was something I had a knack for,” she recalled.

What followed was the kind of résumé that designers’ dreams are made of. An internship at Balenciaga during Nicolas Ghesquière’s tenure, then a position as shoe designer at Saint Laurent, first under Stefano Pilati then Hedi Slimane.

At Celine, in the Phoebe Philo era, she met Daniel Lee, which led her to Bottega Veneta when he became the brand’s artistic director. Then came Loewe and lastly, The Row.

Early on, she’d made the decision to remain freelance, owing to her preference for her own workspace over working in offices. Plus it allowed her to work with a wide range of companies, from the aforementioned high fashion houses to brands like Aigle and Marimekko.

“I love to work in a very technical way [and] all these companies have very specific technical restrictions and infrastructures,” she said.

Throughout, the idea of launching her own brand simmered on the backburner until a chance encounter through friends with her now-business partner Paul Dupuy, an entrepreneur who cofounded health-tech start-up Zoi.

An initial conversation about slippers for customers and staff uniforms yielded an unexpected result: the Christen shoe brand.

What the brand’s ethos boils down to is an innovative design approach that resulted in evolutions like the custom-engineered footbed with carbon components that makes Christen heels lighter than equivalent models from other labels.

And there’s the designer’s no-compromise approach to materials. In her palette are the likes of stretch pony hair and a buttery lambskin sourced from a tannery in Naples, which she used on two-tone tabi-style ballerina flats already part of Christen’s seasonless offer.

In the pipeline are boots that “have the attitude of a riding boot but [are] extremely soft and deconstructed so they feel like slippers,” as she put it, emphasizing the lush shearling material.

Such an approach doesn’t come cheap. Christen shoes start around 950 euros and prices go up to 2,800 euros. At Bergdorf Goodman, a wedge in stretch cotton jersey is $1,150 and a sleek python sandal retails for $1,550 for a python sandal.

After the New York City luxury department store, the brand will retail at Ssense later in the spring and from fall 2025, land at Selfridges, Lane Crawford and Dover Street Market addresses in London, New York and Los Angeles.

And Christen already has the next step on her radar. Owing to her belief that “clothing has to be the frame for the shoe,” she is planning on introducing a compact offering of clothing and fine jewelry designs bowing in 2026.