On Dec. 3, Jurgita Dileviciute and Denitsa Bumbarova will be honored with the Emerging Talent Award at the 39th annual FN Achievement Awards. Below is an article from the magazine’s Dec. 1 print issue about their brand Jude’s breakout success.
To say 2025 has been a whirlwind 12 months for Parisian footwear brand Jude is an understatement.
“Anything we dreamt of before launching a brand, we achieved within a year,” said Jurgita Dileviciute, who cofounded the label with Denitsa Bumbarova in 2024. “The shops and the customer, who is exactly the woman we dreamt about.”
The duo set the wheels in motion for their nascent business through canny placements on the likes of Kylie Jenner, Nicole Kidman, Kim Kardashian and Tracee Ellis Ross before their shoes even hit retail floors. Interest was piqued, as evidenced by the initial slew of Instagram DMs, the founders recalled.
Keen to keep a reasoned development pace, the founders initially targeted “maybe 5,000 pairs, not more” for the brand’s first year of operations, Bumbarova told WWD and FN in February.
As it turns out, she was wildly off the mark, or rather under it. Jude’s tally ended up at some 15,000 pairs produced in that timeframe, with the Date mule (worn by Ellis Ross), the Fame pump (which Kardashian wore on a How to Spend It cover) and the Mixer sandal among its bestsellers.
Jude’s Fame pump in embossed croc leather.
Courtesy of Jude
Celebrity exposure has not abated. Jenner and Kidman continued to appear in Jude heels, joined by Demi Moore, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Rose Byrne.
Even more significantly, “sometimes, we’ve lent shoes for a celebrity, and they’ve come back to buy a pair. We know because we see where we ship,” Dileviciute revealed. “It’s very special that they have them [through stylists] for events, but they then also want to own them and buy them.”
Those close to the designers say the brand’s appeal extends beyond the celebrity sphere. Theresa Marx, who cofounded the Project 213A design business with Dileviciute, lauded Jude shoes as “sensual” and “a must-have for everyone who appreciates good design and comfort.”
She added that Dileviciute and Bumbarova “are an incredible team with a very strong vision. Both have a very focused idea of who the Jude woman is and created a world that truly identifies with both their aesthetics.”
The Date mule is a best seller for Jude.
Courtesy of Jude
Retailers would certainly agree.
“We discovered Jude on social media and were instantly drawn by the brand’s fresh, sexier reinterpretation of classic styles,” said Fwrd buyer Carolyn Park Celebucki.
After signing on with The Webster and a handful of concept stores across the U.S. and Japan in its first season, Jude will be stocked at some 33 retailers for spring 2026, including Bergdorf Goodman, Fwrd, Mytheresa, Net-a-porter and Selfridges.
Brigitte Chartrand, chief buying and merchandising officer of Net-a-porter, recalled, “The brand kept surfacing in conversations about emerging talent and when I took a closer look I immediately saw huge opportunity in it.” She highlighted Jude’s blend of “fashion-forward silhouettes with true everyday wearability.”
For Agathe Nerguisian, head of women’s footwear and sneakers for men and women at Galeries Lafayette, Jude’s “short, efficient and well-positioned” range is “key for a young international brand that stands out thanks to a modern style and strong colors.”
Chloe Grace Moretz wears Jude pumps to an appearance on the ‘Today’ show on Sept. 22, 2025.
Jason Howard/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Jude’s wholesale only accounts for 24 percent of the business, with the rest driven by its e-commerce site, launched just over a year ago. U.S.-based orders comprise roughly half of direct-to-consumer sales, while the U.K., Italy and Australia make up a combined quarter.
The success of Jude comes down to serving style-forward staples to a broad customer base, which the designers described as “professional women, between 30 and 55, who definitely love fashion and are modern.”
The wholesale business is a reservoir of growth for the brand, which aims to have a 50-50 split. Already, the 2026 pre-spring and spring sales have shown a staggering 520 percent leap over the same seasons this year.
For all this, Jude’s founders are keeping a cool head, driven by the impression that “it’s very early, like we have just scratched the surface,” as Bumbarova put it.
They’re already in development on their fall 2026 collection, with “deep research on leather,” they teased. Additionally, they’re exploring expanding into handbags, with a first sleek design slated to be released in January exclusively on their website. Another opportunity is made-to-order — an endeavor made easier by the fact that Dileviciute lives next door to the factory they work with in Portugal.
As the designers reflected on their remarkable year, one experience clearly illustrates how far and fast it all went. During October’s Paris Fashion Week, they returned from an appointment to find a 12-person line outside their showroom door. Seeing such high buyer traffic and subsequent orders was a true pinch-me moment.
“It really felt like the brand is taking off, like confirmation, and it was very satisfying and very emotional, heartwarming, everything. It was beautiful,” Bumbarova said. “We had a moment in the showroom where we said, ‘This time, it feels different.’”
For 39 years, the annual FN Achievement Awards — often called the “Shoe Oscars” — have celebrated the style stars, best brand stories, ardent philanthropists, emerging talents and industry veterans. The 2025 event is supported by Caleres, Listrak, Nordstrom, Skechers, Vibram and Wolverine Worldwide.
