UNDERCOVER and George Cox Reinterpret the 4 Eyelet Derby Through Cindy Sherman's Photography
The FW26 collaboration prints the artist’s late ‘70s and early ‘80s works across white and black derbies built on the brand’s traditional 1353 last.
Name: UNDERCOVER x Cindy Sherman x George Cox 4 Eyelet Derby
Colorway: Black, White
SKU: N/A
MSRP: $450 USD
Release Date: Available now
Where to Buy: George Cox
George Cox and UNDERCOVER have again joined forces on the 4 Eyelet Derby, extending a partnership that runs through Jun Takahashi’s label and George Cox’s Northamptonshire workshop. For Fall/Winter 2026, the two houses hand the silhouette over to American artist Cindy Sherman, whose photographic studies of identity become the surface of the shoe itself.
The construction stays true to George Cox’s house methods. Both colorways are built on the 1353 last, a traditional Northamptonshire round-toe form that the brand pushes into something tougher than its heritage silhouettes suggest. A lightweight EVA sole underpins each pair, while steel eyelets handle the four-eyelet lacing that gives the derby its name. Inside, the shoes are finished with natural kip lining leather, the industrially stamped interior that George Cox treats as part of its signature handwriting.
Rather than dyeing or embossing the leather, George Cox and UNDERCOVER photo-print it, wrapping Sherman’s images around the full body of the shoe so the artwork reads as a continuous surface with its focal point resting on the toe. Sherman built her reputation on staged self-portraits that cast herself in shifting personas, using the camera to interrogate how identity is constructed and performed. That preoccupation with self-image maps neatly onto UNDERCOVER’s own history of subversion.
The two colorways draw on different works from her catalog. The white pair carries Untitled #122, made in 1983, while the black pair pulls from her earlier film-still period, featuring Untitled Film Still #16 from 1979 and Untitled Film Still #53 from 1980. Across both, the source imagery spans 1979 to 1983, turning the derby into a wearable slice of one of the most influential bodies of work in contemporary American photography.
