Common Projects

Common Projects was founded in 2004 in New York by Flavio Girolami and Prathan Poopat as a deliberately under-branded leather sneaker line. The thesis was direct: produce one essentially perfect low-top white leather sneaker (the Achilles Low), made in Italian leather workshops, with a small gold-foil-stamped serial number as the only branding, at a price tier that signalled the work was real but not aspirationally exclusive. The Common Projects vocabulary remained anchored to that single proposition for two decades. The Achilles Low and Achilles High in white nappa leather defined the brand. The Original Achilles Low evolved into the Original Achilles in Premium and other materials; the Cross Trainer (a more athletic silhouette) launched around 2017; the BBall Low (a basketball-derived high-top) extended the line further. Production has remained continuously Italian, with the Marche region cluster of leather workshops doing nearly all the manufacturing. The brand is independent and held by Girolami and Poopat. Common Projects operates a single brand flagship-equivalent through Peggs & Son (the brand's UK retailer relationship), the Dover Street Market global network, MR PORTER, and a wide set of luxury department-store partnerships including SSENSE, Selfridges, Liberty London, Lane Crawford, and Beymen. Few footwear brands of the 2000s have stayed so disciplined around a single product idea while becoming a quiet luxury signifier.