Tarvas and Curation Technique Push the Easy Hiker Into a Sharp Bergamot Yellow

A Helsinki hiking silhouette built for earth tones picks up its loudest colorway yet, suede dyed the sharp citrus-green of unripe bergamot.

Tarvas has built its name on restraint, so a colorway this bright reads as a real departure. The Easy Hiker’s suede upper here runs a sharp yellow-green, close to the color of an unripe bergamot orange, set off by a lighter taupe suede panel wrapped around the heel and collar and pale, undyed laces threaded through recycled-poly eyelets. It sits on the model’s usual black rubberized mudguard, wrapping the entire perimeter of the shoe and stamped with a visible Vibram logo at the midfoot, and a chunky, deep-lugged Vibram outsole built for grip on wet pavement as much as dirt. The overall shape stays close to a low hiking boot rather than a sneaker, with a padded collar and a slightly raised toe that gives the silhouette its trail-ready stance even styled here in a hue that reads more citrus stand than forest floor.

None of the underlying construction changes for this edition. The Easy Hiker, Tarvas‘s second sil after the brand’s original Explorer, pairs that signature mudguard with a recycled latex insole topped in leather and a breathable mesh lining, and is made in Portugal from materials sourced across Europe, a break from the brand’s earlier practice of manufacturing entirely in Finland. The Vibram unit itself uses natural rubber rather than a synthetic compound, which Tarvas has leaned on in its own marketing as both a grip and a durability advantage over harder, less flexible outsoles. At launch in late 2024, the model came in nine largely earth-toned shades of Italian leather, suede, and Cordura, which is what makes this particular suede, named in the release as “Bergamot,” stand out against the rest of the catalog’s browns, greens, and greys.

No pricing or rel date has been confirmed for this colorway as of writing. Past Easy Hiker suede editions have retailed between roughly $380 and $440 depending on the retailer and material, for context.

Neon Green Hiking Shoes

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Tarvas was founded in Helsinki in 2017 by a small group of footwear professionals, including co-founder Jukka Lehtinen, who has said the team started the brand after growing frustrated with how larger shoe companies operated and wanting to source and produce closer to home. By Lehtinen’s own account, the idea began almost as a hobby between people who already had jobs at other footwear companies, developed on the side until it felt real enough to leave those jobs and work on Tarvas full time. The name refers to an ancient moose, meant to evoke strength and endurance, and the brand’s first shoe, the Explorer, took nearly five years of prototyping before the founders were satisfied enough to call it finished, developed with leather from the centuries-old Tärnsjö tannery and built around a mudguard and sole unit the team designed from scratch rather than adapting an existing last. That single-model discipline held for years before the Easy Hiker arrived as only the brand’s second style, followed more recently by a sleeker, low-profile model called the Wanderer.

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The brand has been selective about who it works with. Tarvas connected with the Japanese retail group Nepenthes in 2018 and released its first connection with Engineered Garments the following year, then returned for a second project in 2023, the faux-fur “Forest Bather.” “What I love most about this collab is Daiki and his team’s vision,” Lehtinen said of Engineered Garments’ Daiki Suzuki at the time, adding that Suzuki’s team tends to combine elements that shouldn’t work on paper into finished products that somehow do. Since then, Tarvas has worked with Vancouver retailer HAVEN on a hairy-suede Easy Hiker, with Portland’s Tanner Goods on an Explorer colorway, with Danish label forét on a two-colorway Easy Hiker leather release, and with UOS and Black Bird on further limited editions, the latter a moss-green Wanderer. Lehtinen has described the appeal of these partnerships as giving the collaborating side enough room to bring its own ideas rather than simply relabeling an existing shoe, a lesson he’s traced back to that first Nepenthes-era project.

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Even as a small operation, Tarvas has stayed hands-on with its own supply chain. Lehtinen said as recently as last year that the team was still doing its own quality checks and packing seasonal orders for retailers themselves, a detail that fits a brand whose entire catalog, even now, runs to only three sil. The most recent of those, the Wanderer, arrived within the past year as the brand’s sleekest design to date: a low-profile Vibram sole, a one-piece bellows tongue, and an Italian leather upper offered in Plum, Black, and Terracotta, built with the same mudguard and Portugal production as the Easy Hiker but trimmed down toward an everyday shoe rather than a hiking one.

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Curation Technique’s own background could not be independently confirmed. No listing, press mention, or retailer page for a Tarvas x Curation Technique collaboration turned up in this pass, so what follows from here is limited to what the release name itself states rather than anything verified about who Curation Technique is or where this pair will be sold. If this yellow suede does mark a new name on Tarvas’s short collaborator list, it would be the brand’s most saturated colorway release to date, on a shoe otherwise defined by how quiet it usually is.