Jodo

On the third page, I had a flash. Not a Roger Gicquel flash. A mystical and slightly vulgar flash: I needed a santiag, but not a cowboy santiag from La Dernière Séance. I needed a boot that had crossed the sentimental desert, the city, love, shame, nerve, and came back saying: “I’m a dirty bitch, and I don’t give a damn about you.” And obviously, when you think of Jodorowsky, you’re no longer in the shoe, you’re in a trance. Because Jodo is a man who looks at you and tells you: “if you don’t follow your vision to the end, you’re going to wither away.” So I did what reasonable people do: I did exactly the opposite. I started to draw. At night. Like a witch intent on brewing a powerful love potion. I wanted the toe to be sharp, insolent, precise. Not aggressive: determined. A toe that makes you look like you have a decision, even when you hesitate. I wanted the heel to be like punctuation. Not a “practical” heel, not a “comfortable” heel—those words give me herpes blisters: I wanted a heel that snaps, that asserts, that signs off. A boot that goes “clack” on the asphalt like a yes you stand by. And then there was that detail, the one that changes everything: the shaft, the momentum, the verticality. Because the Jodo isn’t just a tiag de la muerte, it’s a posture. It’s a pretty orthopedic device for the soul: it puts you back on track, it straightens you up, it puts you back in the center, where you were before life asked you to be nice.

I called it Jodo because I didn’t want to pretend. Jodorowsky is pure intensity. The guy survived everything, he invented his own grammar, he made art like someone walking through a fire covered in flammable liquid. He teaches you one simple thing: if you want to create, you have to accept being possessed. Not by a gothic demon. Possessed by your vision.

So I made this tiag de la muerte like you’d cast a spell: a line that elongates, a heel that barks sharply, a silhouette that makes you feel more real than your own reflection. And the day the first pair came out, I had this very specific, very human moment: I wanted to give it to someone I love and say, “Here, take this, it’ll help you get through your life.” Because that’s what it is at heart: Jodo is a tiag for women who want to walk with the conviction of a silver trout. For women who want to feel alive, not just presentable. For women who want a little cinema in their reality. So yes, you can say I met the master in a dream, that he showed up in my workshop with a tarot card and a cryptic phrase. If it amuses you, I’ll tell it to you like that: he came, he looked at my sketches, he said, “sharper,” and then he disappeared like spirits do, without warning. But the truth is simpler and more beautiful: I met him in his work. And that was enough for me to make a boot that carries his intensity like the sweat of an unshaven cowboy. Jodo: a santiag without the folklore, but with a hell of a lot of panache. A tiag de la muerte that doesn’t play cowgirl: she plays you, and she plays fair.