Veteran footwear designer Lucette Holland has launched Ceecee, an artisanal brand built on the secondhand markets of Dakar, Senegal, and a radically different idea of how shoes should be made. Holland spent twenty-plus years at Balenciaga, Celine, Burberry and Calvin Klein, and helmed Yeezy in partnership with Adidas for eight years before their split.
Ceecee’s monthly small-batch collections are crafted in a Dakar atelier with deadstock components, reclaimed textiles and locally sourced materials, with recycled bike tires a key component. The shoes range from colorful wedges and thong sandals to slim sneakers, each pair reflecting the hands that made it.
Ceecee’s future may include wholesale, custom orders and new groups of artisans in other countries. For now, its small batches are a working argument that luxury shoemaking can run on salvage, skill and slowness.
The brand grew organically after a 2024 exhibition in Dakar, and the atelier now employs two full-time shoemakers, a design assistant and a project manager. Holland’s ambition is to push footwear fabrication and supply chain to a place that is “less industrial” yet still delivers product at industry standards.
The design process runs in reverse of the industry standard. Rather than starting with a concept and sourcing materials to serve it, Ceecee lets available materials lead, shifting gears when a color or resource is absent. “It’s a real pivoting exercise,” Holland says of working with what the market offers.
The Paris-based label sits inside Holland’s B Corp-certified studio PAMS Global, and its “pilot” collections are framed as focused studies of materials, processes and systems outside conventional industrial fashion cycles.
The brand began as an open-ended visit to Dakar after the pandemic, where the scale of the port city’s secondhand markets changed her approach. “They already have a huge shoemaking history and tradition in that country,” Holland says. “There’s an enormous resource of artisans, of leathers, of components.”
