Key Points
- Veja and Brazilian label Misci released the Paulistana Nolyn, teased at Rio Fashion Week in April.
- The shoe uses pirarucu leather, an Amazonian fish skin once discarded as waste.
- It retails for €290 (~$315) in two colorways, almond and walnut.
- Misci founder Airon Martin patterned the quilting after Brazil's dunes.
Sustainability in sneakers usually arrives as a marketing line stitched onto a shoe that would exist anyway. The Veja x Misci Paulistana Nolyn does the opposite: the material is the point. The French label and the São Paulo brand Misci have built a sneaker around pirarucu — the leather of a giant Amazonian freshwater fish whose skins were, until recently, thrown away by the riverside communities that catch it. The waste product is now the luxury surface.
Pirarucu leather appears on the counter, tongue, and toe of the Paulistana Nolyn, a riff on Veja's retro Paulistana runner. Misci founder Airon Martin laid curved quilting lines across the upper meant to echo Brazil's dunes and landscapes, and the shoe comes in two earth tones — almond, a tonal beige, and walnut, with reddish-brown accents. It retails for €290 (~$315), sold worldwide online and through Veja and Misci stores plus select retailers across Europe, Latin America, and South Korea.
What makes the collaboration more than a novelty is the sourcing logic. Pirarucu fishing in the Amazon is managed under quota systems that tie local livelihoods to keeping the fish population healthy; turning the skins into a high-margin material gives those communities a reason to protect the river rather than strip it. That is a sharper version of the circular-economy pitch than most heritage houses manage, and it lands in the same lane Veja has occupied since it started building sneakers around wild rubber and organic cotton.
It also reads as luxury done from the supply chain up rather than the logo down — the same instinct visible when Jordan Brand and the design label Saint Michael priced a capsule from $80 to $1,000 and let craft, not branding, set the ceiling. Martin said Veja has "always shown a genuine commitment to valuing Brazil and its culture," and described the partnership as feeling natural from the start.
The timing is deliberate. Misci first teased the shoe on its runway at Rio Fashion Week's fall 2026 showcase in April before reaching stores, pairing a fashion-week debut with a material story that travels further than a colorway ever could.
Source: WWD.
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