Cheetah Stories x Planet of the Grapes: Mercury enters vegan luxury footwear
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Cheetah Stories brings Planet of the Grapes into one of the most exacting areas of fashion design: luxury footwear.
Founded by Fiorella Erni, Cheetah Stories is a vegan high-heel brand with a strong commitment to animal-free materials, refined design and considered making.
The collaboration with Planet of the Grapes centred on Mercury, used in Radix brown colourway for three pairs of handmade high heels launched in Milan.
For Planet of the Grapes, this is a significant material milestone. Footwear demands precision. A shoe material has to shape, curve, hold tension and support a highly finished object at a close visual scale. This is particularly necessary for the sharp, vertiginous stiletto heel itself.
Mercury as a footwear material
Mercury has a rich surface presence that lends itself naturally to luxury applications. In the Cheetah Stories collaboration, the material was used across the front of the shoe, shaping around the entire upper shoe area and the heel, pushing Mercury to new levels of demand and requirements. And it worked.
This is a demanding placement. The toe of a heel is one of the areas where material behaviour becomes immediately visible. It needs to wrap cleanly, hold form and contribute to the elegance of the design.
According to Planet of the Grapes founder Sam, the material worked beautifully in this context, lending itself to the fine shaping and sculptural quality of the shoe.
A vegan heel made in Milan
The collaboration also matters because of Cheetah Stories’ uncompromising vegan position. Every element of the shoe is considered through an animal-free lens, from material selection to production environment.
The heels were handmade in Milan, bringing Mercury into a luxury craft context associated with precision, finish and high-level footwear construction. Mark Schwartz, an acclaimed shoe designer, contributed to the design world of the project, giving the collaboration an additional layer of creative refinement.
For grape-based biomaterials, this kind of application is important. It shows how a material can enter luxury not as a compromise, but as part of the design proposition.
Why vegan luxury needs better material stories
The vegan footwear market has often been dominated by synthetic alternatives. While those materials remove animal inputs, they do not always offer a stronger environmental or sensory story.
Mercury gives Cheetah Stories a different kind of material language: animal-free, grape-based and visually rich. It allows the shoe to carry values without losing glamour, drama or desirability.
That is where this collaboration feels especially relevant. It proves that sustainable material innovation does not have to soften luxury. It can sharpen it.
Mercury enters vegan luxury footwear
Cheetah Stories is a strong addition to the Planet of the Grapes collaboration archive because it places Mercury in a high-performance, high-visibility luxury category.
The project demonstrates footwear potential, vegan luxury alignment and the ability of grape-based biomaterials to hold form in an elegant, handmade object. It also opens a future direction for Planet of the Grapes in animal-free footwear, from heels and occasion shoes to other crafted accessories.
Mercury was not treated as a substitute surface. It became part of the shoe’s identity.
For Planet of the Grapes, it demonstrates how grape-based biomaterials can support luxury brands looking for packaging or product details with deeper origin, tactility and meaning. Mercury brings texture to the fragrance experience, not as a decorative extra, but as part of the product’s sensory world.
Moving biomaterials forward
Interested in exploring grape-derived biomaterials for applications in fashion, accessories, interiors, mobility or luxury packaging?
Discover the Planet of the Grapes Material Library or get in touch to discuss sampling, applications and collaborations.
