Agent 86, more famously known as Maxwell Smart, in the classic 1960s situation comedy Get Smart had a shoe phone. If you think about it: who hasn’t wanted turn their shoe into a phone, no matter how impractical and unsanitary it is. Now you can actually own one yourself with UK artist Sean Miles “upcycled” shoe collection – a collaboration with mobile United Kingdom phone carrier’s O2 Recycle initiative.
With inspiration not from Maxwell Smart (sort of?), but from Sports Illustrated’s famous free sneaker phone that was offered with every subscription, Sean Miles took older model Nokia and LG handsets and embedded them into the souls of a Christian Louboutin heel, a classic men’s brogue, a Nike Air trainer and a Hunter Welly.
As the life cycle and “cool cycle” of gadgetry becomes shorter and shorter, the world’s landfills are filling up faster and faster with old gadgets. So why not put them in the souls of our shoes?
It is completely unpractical and unsanitary, but Mile’s shoe phone collection is definitely raising awareness. You can turn in your old phones to O2’s recycling program and they will give you cash. Pretty good deal if you have a bunch of Nokia bricks laying around.
Can you actually buy these one of a kind pieces? The collection is obviously more of a marketing gimmick to raise awareness of O2’s mobile phone recycling program but, the fully function shoe sets are said to cost around $4,000 each. Alas, as of yet there is no where online to grab a pair.
The next time you hear that classic old school ring tone – you know the one – it might be coming from the shoe of the person next you.
