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SFSU's
Sole Man
Imelda
Marcos, meet Arvind Gupta.
Even the world's most famous shoe-aholic might have liked this San Francisco
State grad student's award-winning footwear design: a shoe with interchangeable
uppers and bottoms.
Gupta's shoe -- which won a gold medal in BusinessWeek's Industrial Design
Excellence Awards last summer -- consists of three parts -- frame, upper
sleeve and lower sleeve, or sole. The footwear fashionista would buy one
plastic frame and outfit it with sleeves of any style of his or her choosing.
Gupta's prototype, pictured at left, is a futuristic-looking unisex thong,
but a nice little sling-back pump would work, too.
"I even made a high-heeled version. It was pretty funky," said
Gupta, 29, who was an options trader before coming to San Francisco State
to study design.
Gupta's shoe would make sense moneywise but it's also politically correct.
"You wouldn't need any sweatshops because the sleeves are made of
injection molded rubber," he said.
Gupta has applied for a patent but since he's not really interested in
the shoe business, he has no plans to shop around his idea to manufacturers.
The fun part was coming up with the idea and seeing it if would work.
"Right now, I'm on to other design work," he said.
-- Matt Itelson
 
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