Phones4shoe

Or rather, to turn shoes into phones. O2 Recycle, the arm set up by the telecoms group to deal with sustainability issues, approached Miles, who presumably had noticed similar issues with redundant footwear.

Taking a Christian Louboutin heel, a classic men’s brogue, a Nike Air trainer and a Hunter welly, Miles combined them with Nokia and LG phones to repurpose them as Walkie Talkies. Why had nobody thought of this before? Hmmm.

‘I wondered how I could make phones that people might be embarrassed to be seen with into something that would give them a new lease of life – which is what upcycling is all about,’ says Miles.

I’m fairly sure I’d feel less embarrassed to be seen with a Nokia 6280, then brandishing a wellington on public transport.

We can’t be too cynical though, the sentiment is there, and it has produced these fantastic photographs, art directed to evoke a kind of stubborn realism only belied by the actor’s impassive expressions. 

Miles says, ‘I hoped that, by turning the phones into Walkie Talkies, I would raise a smile and perhaps a laugh and create things that people wanted once again.’

He adds, ‘I hope that they can get more people talking about the need to recycle old gadgets rather than binning them.’