Granddad sandals are the official dress code of Marseille’s creative boom

A little grimier than Provence, a little more laissez-faire than Paris, there was a moment last summer when almost everyone working in the arts felt obliged to go to Marseille. Backdropped by dramatic, rough-hewn buildings and near-endless sunshine, the region feels like a pre-hipster Shoreditch. To walk through Marseille’s cooler neighbourhoods is to be confronted by an aroma of rotisserie chicken and pop-up galleries and bootleg markets. There, a dalliance of immigrant and creative communities harbour a unique, southern pride, with the inhabitants – known as “Marseillais” – standing tall against the vapid gentrification that allowed cat cafés to dominate East London. 

There are two figures within Marseille’s artistic renaissance. The first is Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, the Swiss-French architect otherwise known as Le Corbusier, who built the infamous La Cité Radieuse in 1952. Considered a rare wonder of architecture, the building sparked a whole generation of concrete tower blocks throughout the world, although the copyists often omitted his apartments’ best features, like complete acoustic insulation and a double-height space for the living area. The structure – designed as a behemoth vertical city where inhabitants could live, shop, and go to school in the same block – might have failed in its attempts to change the lives of working people in post-war France (it was too far removed from the centre, too cloistered from real life), but it’s now a hub for Marseille’s creative scene, occupied by art obsessives and interior designers and a cheap and cheerful hotel manned by an eccentric married couple. 

Among the building’s inhabitants is Olivier Amsellem, a fashion photographer who worked closely with Sarah Andelman on the launch of Colette in Paris before opening JoggingJogging in Marseille. The city’s first-ever concept store, Jogging boasts a deliberately-dilapidated café and unusual pieces from the collections of JW Anderson, Kiko Kostadinov, and Vaquera – as well as a beach-side artist residency in Samena, the effect of which is like taking a barbiturate. Amsellem is gruff and old-school fashion and he’s often referred to as the unofficial mayor of Marseille, known for corralling the city’s creative waifs and strays, among them Memphis Milano designer Peter Shire and artist Sara Sadik. At the core of Amsellem’s work is a fascination with arte povera – inspired by Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, and Pierre Jeanneret, who contributed to the design of the Cité Radieuse – which is built on the notion that “what requires a poor and slow reflection has for result a poor and essential artwork”. 

Bringing all of this together is Suicoke – the sturdy shoe brand first beamed into the subcultural ether by Slam Jam – whose SS23 collection rides on all those artistic collaborations that once took place in La Cité Radieuse. Beloved for its functional footwear, the label’s summer offering comprises amphibious slip-ons, corrugated hiking sandals, suede loafer-mule hybrids, and wooden geta-inspired flip flops with bulbous, paisley-print straps. It’s all about taking the radical spirit of La Cité Radieuse – “a machine for living in” – and funnelling it into fashion. Click through the gallery above to see the label’s SS23 collection in their spiritual home and head down to Jogging in Marseille where key pieces are being showcased in a crude, organic installation designed by Amsellem.