What Bensimon is known for
Bensimon is a French footwear brand built on a canvas tennis shoe Serge Bensimon developed in 1979 from French-army-surplus stock, hand-dyeing the canvas without bleeding into the rubber sole; its first store opened in 1986 in Paris's Marais.
Bensimon's roots go back to 1945, when Serge Bensimon's grandfather started a family business importing secondhand American clothing to France. In 1979, Serge and his brother Yves acquired roughly 100,000 pairs of surplus white tennis shoes originally made for the French army. Serge developed a dyeing process capable of coloring the canvas uppers in a range of colors without the dye bleeding onto the rubber soles.
In 1980 he founded Surplus Bensimon, and by 1984 the brand had introduced its first full apparel collection. The first dedicated Bensimon store opened in 1986 in Paris's Le Marais district, via the retailer Autour du Monde. The shoe became associated with a particular French off-duty style, worn publicly by figures including Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Canvas sneakers, casual
France
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