Brazil - Who knew?

In Brazil there are cute shops in the malls called 'Jelly' by Melissa. Here you can find awesome, all-plastic shoes - think Jelly shoes circa 1980's but with much cooler designs, patterns and styles. 

Jelly Shoes are all the rage here - at first I was not so into them, but like all things, after a while I found myself wanting to get a pair! In Rio it rains quite a bit, and the streets are pretty dirty, so if you have sandals on, your feet get pretty grubby and so do your shoes - plastic therefore makes perfect sense, as you can wash them easy-peasy.

  

I have yet to buy some, so I went to browse online. Upon some research, I realized the Jelly shoe was in fact invented by the Brazilians, who knew?! They were apparently first brought to America in 1982 at that year's world fair, by a company called Grendha, which was a new business joint venture between an already existing Brazilian company called Grendene, and an American businessman. 

Another Brazilian company 'Melissa' these days creates the more stylin (and more expensive) Jelly shoes as mentioned above. Here is list of designers that have designed for Melissa (Zaha Hadid even!):

Jean Paul Gaultier

• Vivienne Westwood
• Edson Matsuo
• Alexandre Herchcovitch
• Zaha Hadid
• Gaetano Pesce
• Campana Brothers
• Karim Rashid
• Lovefoxxx
• Isabela Capeto
• J Maskrey
• Judy Blame

So next time you see me folks, I will most likely be sporting neon moulded plastic shoes -jump on this Jelly revival train with me!