Naturalizer is doubling down on its inclusivity efforts this fall.
This month, the 97-year-old women’s footwear brand is expanding its Contoured Calf innovation with its largest offering to-date. According to Natelle Baddeley, chief product officer of the Brand Portfolio at Naturalizer parent company Caleres, the new fall 2024 Contoured Calf collection comes in a range of styles and sizes from 5M-12XW, plus extended calf sizing in narrow, medium, wide and extra wide.
The collection, which launched in fall 2023, also offers over 50 designs in XW shoe width, with plans to double that in spring 2025.
“Central to Naturalizer’s product lens of innovating on inclusivity, offering hard-to-find sizes and widths has always been our mission,” Baddeley told FN in an exclusive interview. “We set our sights on extending our boot calf sizes decades ago. More recently, consumer insights told us that wide and narrow calf women were not able to wear the styles the way that they wanted, and we set out to solve that.”
To achieve this new ambitious range of sizes, Caleres’ Cal-Lab held an insights study of over 500 wide-calf consumers and identified frustration in finding fashion-forward styles with the right fit. To solve the problems of gaps and fluting often associated with narrow and wide-calf boots, the team had to change how the boots are made, creating new molds based on the measurements from 170 women.
“Most wide or narrow calf boots are sized up or down straight up the calf without contouring to the leg form,” Baddeley explained. “This creates a gapping. Solving that with design intention was the challenge. Finding details and gussets that are integrated into the design allowing beauty and comfort in equal balance was the challenge and one we believe we solved.”
And reaction to the expanded offering has been “incredible,” Baddeley told FN. “Women feel seen and heard that fashion does not have to be one-size-fits-all,” the executive said. “We have many reviews and comments thanking Naturalizer for creating styles that fit women of different shapes and sizes.”
With this feedback in mind, Caleres has started to offer an extended range of sizes in its other shoe brands including Veronica Beard, Vince, Franco Sarto, Vionic, Dr. Scholl’s and Lifestride. “A strategic advantage of Caleres’ Cal-Lab is once an innovation has been perfected it can be optimized within the portfolio and executed in the precise design codes of each brand,” Baddeley said. “But in no brand is it more prominent than Naturalizer, given its heritage and inclusivity mission.”
As for why more brands in the industry haven’t adopted this level of extended sizing in their footwear offering, Baddeley admitted that it could be cost prohibitive. “For many brands the financial hurdles to integrate a thoughtful size and width program pose a challenge,” she said. “Size and width for all is deeply embedded in our brand ethos. We have developed and perfected our fit over time and have established a strong brand advocacy around that. Knowing she can browse a vast offering across styles and feel included in knowing her size will be offered is why she keeps coming back. It’s why we do what we do.”
Naturalizer’s new Contoured Calf collection will be supported by a dedicated campaign titled “United in Fashion,” which aims to unite women from narrow to extra wide width with each woman sharing their voice in provoking greater access to fashion that fits more women. Participating women include CeCe Olissa, founder of CurvyCon; Elizabetta Dessy, model and former Olympic swimmer; and Khrystyana, body inclusivity champion and creator of Real Catwalk.
On top of its expanded Contoured Calf collection, the footwear brand is also launching a new ambassador collective with the mission to “amplify Naturalizer’s female-first vision and to generate meaningful and deep conversations around advancing inclusivity in fashion.”
The collective will debut with two founding members – Deepica Mutyala, founder of inclusive beauty brand Live Tinted and previous Naturalizer collaborator, and Lauren Chan, a model, entrepreneur and inclusivity advocate.
Starting this fall, Mutyala and Chan will bring this new narrative forward through a digital campaign and event series that will unfold over the next 12 months. Both women, and future additions to the collective, are meant to represent “authentic champions of inclusivity,” the company added.
“If it doesn’t feel like I’m making a difference in the world, I don’t want to do it,” Mutyala said. “This feels genuine and purposeful to my goals. I hope we’re leading by example to show other brands that inclusivity is important to spotlight so that one day we don’t even have to have these conversations. It’s just the norm in society.”
Chan added, “My career has been spent trying to make the world a better place for people who have been marginalized through fashion. And I’m still fighting tooth and nail to be included, to make space for other women when I get included. To me, inclusivity will be reached when all kinds of people see themselves reflected in the culture, whether that’s through brands or media. And I feel like here we’re doing our part to make that happen.”
