Will Verona, Founder of PURIFIED / Biodegradable Durable Sneakers

In this episode of the Menswear Style Podcast, we speak with Will Verona, founder of PURIFIED (https://purified.eco/) , the London-based footwear brand attempting to rethink the entire lifecycle of a shoe by creating footwear made entirely without plastic. Will’s journey into shoemaking began in Italy, where he spent six months studying the technical side of footwear — learning pattern making, construction, shoe lasts and the practical skills needed to turn designs into finished shoes. He subsequently spent five years working as a footwear designer, developing a fascination with traditional shoe constructions that have increasingly disappeared from modern manufacturing. That experience eventually led to PURIFIED. The concept was sparked in part by Will’s experiences working in Sri Lanka, where he regularly passed a vast landfill site known locally as “Trash Mountain”. Seeing the scale of the waste prompted him to question the footwear industry’s approach to end-of-life products and whether shoes really need to be made from materials that can remain in the environment for generations. PURIFIED’s answer is to reject plastics, synthetic materials and petroleum-based glues altogether, instead creating footwear from natural materials designed to return to the earth at the end of their useful life. Will explains why he believes the industry has become so dependent on synthetic components and why creating a genuinely plastic-free shoe is considerably more challenging than