FUBUKI

Confusingly, Fubuki’s Japanese-inspired boots and outdoor clogs actually hail from Sweden.

It started with a pair of garish orange boots on the streets of Stockholm. Uni student Kalle Norman had picked them up on a ski trip to snowy Hokkaido, after noticing that pretty much every local liftie, snow-plough driver and workman wore the same unbranded lightweight snow boots – usually in the same bright orange.

Little did he know when he brought a few pairs back to Sweden that his ten-minute walk to campus would turn into a daily fashion show. Strangers stopped him on the street, and even his dad pinched a pair. Everyone wanted in.

Kalle teamed up with childhood friend Christofer Ljunggren, and Fubuki was born. The brand launched in 2019, survived a pandemic and a typhoon that destroyed their Japanese supplier’s factory, and has since grown from 100 pairs stacked in a Stockholm student flat to over 300 stores across 14 countries.

Fubuki means ‘snowstorm’ in Japanese, but their wellies and outdoor slippers have proved just as popular as the original snow boots. Across the range, everything’s made to be warm, waterproof, durable and surprisingly lightweight, in colours that refuse to blend in.