Mindful Wandering: An Interview with Tarvas
A brief chat with Tarvas co-founder Jukka Lehtinen, unpacking the creative process behind The Wanderer — a walking shoe that, for me, stands as one of the most wonderful releases of 2025.
Before We Start
If you’re new here, you can catch up on some recent work:
I Think, Therefore I Tastemake: My thoughts on tastemaking, influence, and intention in modern content — exploring slow style, fatigue, and what’s to come
New Year, New (Kinda the Same) Me: A year-end reflection on growth, fear, and staying honest — along with the designers and pieces that caught my eye recently
Basic? (How Japanese brands get labelled “boring” or “expensive,” and the disconnect between passion, content, and algorithm-driven taste)
I’m Not a Hater, But I Am a Hater: The current state of menswear discourse & fashion bros
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Between tracking down pieces, speaking with designers, and writing these essays, this project takes more time than my weekly screen-time report would like to admit — and your support truly does make this all possible.
Update: I will be in Paris from the 20th until the 26th — expect plenty of coverage throughout the week, along with interviews and features to follow.
Thank you for being here.
Introduction
“Nature brings clarity and keeps you connected with yourself.”
A sentiment that’s resonated with me more and more in recent months.
We live in this ever-evolving technodystopian world — one that grows darker by the day — keeping us endlessly engaged through the palm of our hands, while slowly disconnecting us from the real world. Our minds go brrrrr as we double-tap another reel of someone exploring the outdoors on Instagram — an experience you can have for the low, low price of zero dollars.
We’re sold faux self-help guides, meditation apps, and wellness narratives daily, yet we continue to crave peace, stillness, and some sense of contentment. The self-care section at your local bookstore remains popular, though I can’t help but feel people are often more interested in ticking off a Goodreads achievement than actually absorbing what they’re reading.
As I mentioned in my previous post, people have grown tired of the ADHD-paced style of content we’ve lived with over the past six to eight years. It feels natural to search for an escape right now — something grounding. A way to slow time down, or at the very least, remind yourself that it exists beyond a screen.
Along that search, you inevitably encounter people, places, or objects that don’t claim to have answers — they simply make it easier to step away, move your body, and be present at your own pace, on your own terms.
Tarvas, a brand rooted in functionality and intention, was founded in 2017 by Jukka Lehtinen, Pekka Keinänen, and Harri Saarikoski, with the goal of keeping people active, present, and moving with purpose. Their philosophy isn’t about escape in the abstract, but about reconnecting through motion: using the body to quiet the mind and finding balance by being outdoors, whatever that looks like for you.
For me, that ranges from exploring the lushness of Bowen or Gabriola Island here in British Columbia, to something as simple as walking down the street to grab lilies for my apartment.
The brand focuses on creating exceptionally well-built footwear, designed to withstand harsher, unpredictable climates like Helsinki’s. But the shoes are only part of the story. As they note on their website, “design was never only about the shoe.” It’s about the possibilities and experiences that unfold through wear — how a product evolves alongside you, gradually shaping itself into your daily life.
Too often, we see brands adopt a vague, nature-means-everything philosophy while actively contributing to the ever-growing accumulation of fashion waste across parts of Africa, Asia, and beyond.
With Tarvas, the intention feels genuine, and you can feel it the moment you slip on a pair of their Wanderers. There’s a quiet calm to its design. While understated upon first glance, it’s beautifully constructed, featuring a fully wrapped mudguard for unpredictable weather, an Italian leather upper, a Vibram rubber sole, low-profile laces — each detail serving a purpose. Nothing excessive, nothing performative.
As someone who’s worn them across various terrains and climates, I can feel the purpose behind the foundation of the shoe. In a way, it’s made me more inclined to explore the outdoors in whatever way I can manage, bad knees and all. I won’t be trekking to the top of a mountain anytime soon, but I’ll do my best.
While the Wanderer stands firmly on its own as a well-designed shoe, it ultimately serves as a reflection of something larger. With Tarvas, the product isn’t the end point — it’s a means of encouraging a slower, more intentional way of moving through the world. One that places value on longevity, presence, and physical engagement over novelty and excess.
Wanting to better understand the process behind creating something so considered, and what the future holds for the Finnish label, I reached out to Jukka Lehtinen, one of the founders of Tarvas, to discuss how it all came to be.
Oh, and that quote at the beginning? Yeah, it’s from Tarvas’ website.
Note:
Tarvas will be hosting their own AW26 showroom during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, open from January 21st to the 25th. It marks a first for the brand — and a major milestone worth calling out as they continue to scale thoughtfully on their own terms.
A huge win. Congratulations to the entire team.
Interview
Before we fully get started, I’d love to know how you came up with the name The Wanderer. As someone who’s a big walker and tends to wander aimlessly, I felt like it was a very fitting name — especially given how perfect they are for walking.
Thanks for the compliment.
We tend to start the design process with a vision of what the end-user might use the shoes for — sort of a use-case approach to make sure we’re not creating silhouettes that compete with each other.
We already have the Explorer, a robust walking shoe, and the Easy Hiker for more demanding terrain. Next to those, it felt right that a lightweight, low-profile walking shoe with functional elements should be called the Wanderer.
Very subtle, yet very sharp — the design feels calming, almost meditative. It’s a wonderful reflection of the brand’s ethos. What inspired The Wanderer’s design? And could you walk me through how you selected the materials?
I like the way you describe it as meditative.
I think it has to do with how the elements of the shoe interact. At first glance it looks minimalistic — and it is — but there’s this interesting dialogue between the one-piece upper, the wraparound mudguard, and the wavy Vibram sole. On paper they shouldn’t fit together, but somehow they complement each other extremely well.
I started sketching during Paris Fashion Week in June 2024 and showed the first drawing to my buddy Marc from École de Pensée in Montreal. He was really into it. I had a vision of a lightweight, low-profile shoe that merged approach-shoe elements with elevated menswear sensibilities (and naturally, the Tarvas mudguard).
Everything progressed quickly from there. I found a great Vibram sole they’ve had in their collection since the early 2000s, and once I got back from Paris, we didn’t take long to build the first prototype.
For materials, we always source everything ourselves and communicate directly with tanneries and suppliers. The upper leather we chose for the first inline assortment is from a tannery in Montebello, Italy — it has a slight gloss that elevates the design just enough to make it interesting.
The Vibram sole with the full-wrap mudguard is kind of insane, but in the best way. It feels like you’re setting a new standard for shoes in this category. How does it feel knowing you’re pushing the bar forward?
I’m not sure we’re pushing bars forward, but maybe we’ve played a part in popularizing mudguards in footwear lately. It’s a core element of our designs — almost like branding, but with real functionality.
On the mood-board for this shoe, what kind of weather and terrain were you imagining it being used in? How does it perform out there?
The Wanderer is our lightest and lowest-profile silhouette. We envisioned it for fairly even terrain since it doesn’t have the same structure or support as the Easy Hiker. It’s at its best in a city–field–park type environment.
How many iterations did you go through before landing on the final design? After wearing them, breaking them in, and testing them on different terrain, you can really feel how thoughtful everything is.
Sometimes it takes up to five iterations to nail a design, but we were lucky — we got this one right on the first prototype. That’s never happened before. Maybe we’re getting better, or maybe it was pure luck.
Tarvas has always prioritized functionality, choosing premium materials and making what is essentially a luxury product for both the outdoors and everyday wear. What inspired this? Was it personal experience, or a gap you saw in the market?
A little bit of both. Growing up in Finland, you deal with challenging weather most of the year. People here basically grow up wear-testing functional product without realizing it. That naturally pushed us toward creating a brand like Tarvas.
When we started prototyping the first pair back in 2012, it was immediately clear we wanted to make something that could withstand rough weather conditions. The gap we noticed was that not many brands were making functional footwear in a subtle way. Most, at the time, leaned heavily on technical synthetics, bright colours, and big logos.
Given how consumers today are gravitating toward quality and longevity — pieces that last — how has Tarvas evolved? Has demand changed, or the way you work?
We laid the foundation slowly. For the first four years we only had one model in the collection. Those years taught us a lot about local manufacturing and, as first-time brand owners, about running a company.
After passing the five-year mark, things started to pick up. Demand has grown, partly because people now gravitate toward high-quality, timeless, functional products with fewer logos — and partly because our collection has expanded from one to four models, each with its own use case and fit.
This feels like a bold, and very successful, step forward. What’s next beyond The Wanderer? How does this model set the tone for the future?
I do think we made a bold step forward with the Wanderer, but I don’t see us changing our overall design DNA much. We want to keep making high-quality, functional footwear close to home and grow the collection step by step.
We have some interesting new models in development right now. They seem promising. Maybe we can catch up next year and talk more about that.
The shoes are crafted in Portugal using European-sourced materials and components. How did that come to be? Were there specific advantages compared to other manufacturing hubs?
Keeping everything in Europe — design, sourcing, manufacturing — is important to us. Coming from Finland, we feel it’s a more sustainable way to make shoes. In terms of order quantities and inventory risks, producing in Europe allows us to make per-order and avoid ending up with lots of unsold inventory each season.
Since 2017, we’ve only had an end-of-season sale once, and we try to keep it that way.
It’s been really special seeing what Tarvas is building. How does the brand see itself evolving — in design, distribution, sustainability, and beyond?
Thank you. Without giving away too much, we’re trying to keep the momentum going while making sure we’re making wise, long-term decisions.
There are no quick fixes in life!