Bleue Burnham Plants a Garden at New Balance’s Flimby Factory, and a Brown 991v1 to Match

New Balance’s Cumbria factory has grown an actual garden, nar on film by Gardeners’ World host Monty Don, with a suede 991v1 built from its hue.

Working with New Balance’s Made in England line usually starts with an archive ref or a sig material. For Bleue Burnham, it started with soil. The London jewelry label’s first sneaker, a reworked 991v1 rel September 12, takes its entire palette from a garden the brand design this year at New Balance’s factory in Flimby, Cumbria.

The upper stacks several depths of brown suede across its panels, with contrast stitching in yellow, blue, and pink tracing each seam, standing in for the fine stems and petals of the garden itself. Look closely and the effect reads like plant stems breaking through soil, an intentional echo of the garden rather than a decorative afterthought. Sage green laces and a pale blue insole pull from Bleue Burnham’s own signature hue, while a cream midsole and black outsole hold the rest of the palette together underfoot. New Balance’s original ABZORB cushioning carries through unchanged from the running shoe’s 2001 debut.

The 991v1 launches exclusively through Bleue Burnham’s mailing list at 12pm BST on September 12 (7am in New York, 8pm in Tokyo and Seoul), with early access reserved for subscribers rather than a walk-up release. Retail price and style code had not been disclosed at time of writing.

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Bleue Burnham was founded in London in 2018 by Bleue Wickham-Burnham, whose rings, necklaces, and bracelets are built almost entirely around the shapes of flowers, trees, and gardens, cast in solid gold and silver. Pieces begin as research and prototypes inside the label’s own London studio, then move to UK-based craftsmen for finishing rather than overseas mass production.

That same plant-first design lang has already crossed into fashion, with prior connects for Gucci Vault and Palm Angels, plus press recognition from Vogue, GQ, and i-D among others. The label works exclusively in solid precious metals rather than plating, and counts gardeners among the wider mix of creative directors, musicians, and architects it lists as wearers, a detail that makes the Flimby project feel less like a stretch and more like the label returning to its own audience. The New Balance collide marks Bleue Burnham’s first move into footwear, and its first partner with a manufacturer rather than a fellow design house, a shift the brand marked by design something consider larger than a ring: an entire garden.

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The 991 itself predates Bleue Burnham’s jewelry business by seventeen years. New Balance introduced the sil in 2001 as the eighth model in the 99X series and the first to carry view ABZORB cushion across both the heel and forefoot, a shift from the heel-only setup of earlier models in the line, pair with an Ndurance rubber outsole compound built for durability. It has been built since at the Flimby, Cumbria factory New Balance has operated since 1982, the site that still produces the suede-and-mesh construction the Made in England badge is known for, and the one the brand marked with a 20th-anniversary reissue of the 991 back in 2021.

That factory has hosted a long line of guest convincers over the years, include Aimé Leon Dore, Drake’s, Dover Street Market, Aries, Palace, and even watchmaker Franck Muller, each make its own limit 991 on the same Cumbria line. Bleue Burnham is the first jewelry label to join that list, though Franck Muller’s earlier appear suggests New Balance has been open to haute-goods convincers well before this one.

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Alongside the shoe, Bleue Burnham design an actual garden for Flimby’s factory floor: a restorative space where staff can step away from production during breaks, with seating tucked into the flower beds and picnic benches built around cherry trees standing in for umbrellas. The project is captured on film by director Harry Cauty and narrated by Monty Don, the longtime lead presenter of the BBC’s Gardeners’ World, who took over the show from Alan Titchmarsh in 2003 and ran his own jewelry business decades before moving into horticulture and broadcasting.

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The planting itself draws on the New Perennial movement and the British cottage garden tradition, mixing sweeping stray of perennials with roses, lilies, hollyhocks, and foxgloves. Wildflower borders ring the outer edges, giving way to daffodils in early spring and to pink-blossoming Japanese cherry trees as the season turns, with the hedging along one boundary deliberately lowered so the surrounding Lake District scenery reads into the garden itself rather than stopping at its edge. It is Bleue Burnham’s first professionally designed garden of any kind, built for factory workers rather than a private client, which may explain why the brand chose to hand its hue story over to the sneaker rather than keep the two projects separate. Both the documentary and the 991v1 built from its colors go live on September 12.