Summer has a sound. Sometimes it is obvious: a track spilling from a late-night terrace, a bassline following you out of a taxi, a song that suddenly belongs to a place. Other times, it is quieter. A glass touching a table. Feet moving across a studio floor. The hush that comes when someone is really listening.
With The Voices, part of Sounds of Summer ’26, Level Shoes turns that idea into a portrait series. Designers, DJs, chefs and founders are brought together to explore sound not simply as music, but as memory, craft, ritual and connection. Each portrait is paired with a curated summer soundtrack and new-season pieces from the Summer Edit.
Zaid Seddiqi: Listening as Presence
For Zaid Seddiqi, co-founder of Banou Studio, listening is less background noise and more a form of stillness. Connected to Banou Studio’s world of materiality, craftsmanship and high-fidelity sound, his approach feels almost meditative. As he puts it, “Listening becomes almost spiritual. It slows you down. It demands you sit still, feel deeply, and exist fully in the moment.”
Wearing Dries Van Noten, EYTYS and Le Specs, Seddiqi’s portrait is rooted in the idea that sound can hold you in place.
Parvané Barret: Listening as Gathering
For DJ and creative Parvané Barret, sound sets the table before anyone sits down. With Table Sonor, her self-conceived project exploring the relationship between music and dining, she treats sound as an invisible host, shaping the mood long before the first plate arrives.
“Sound will always create a sense of place, especially when it’s dinner at somebody’s home,” she says. Wearing LOEWE, Jacquemus and G.H.BASS, Barret reminds us that atmosphere is often something we hear first.
Hadrien Villedieu: Listening as Memory
For Hadrien Villedieu, chef at Chez Wam, sound sits close to flavour. Laughter around a long lunch, glasses clinking, a familiar song drifting through a restaurant; these are the small details that can pull us instantly back into another time.
Wearing Premiata, Villedieu’s portrait understands dining as something deeply sensory, where what we hear becomes part of what we remember.
Mimi & Brittany: Listening Through Movement
For Mimi and Brittany, founders of SYNKRO CLUB, sound begins in the body. Through immersive, headset-led sessions, they explore rhythm, emotion and physical presence, turning movement into something felt before it is understood.
“Music has a way of making you feel before you even think,” they say. Wearing CELINE, TOTEME, The Attico, Christopher Esber, The Lline, STAUD and New Balance, their portrait places presence above performance.
Listen to Synkro Club’s Playlist.
Cascou: Listening as Discovery
Moving between London’s vinyl culture and Dubai’s nightlife, DJ Cascou approaches music as a shared language. His practice stretches from independent listening spaces to community-led experiences, including Soho House x Level Shoes at Honeycomb HiFi, where sound becomes both identity and connection.
Wearing HOKA, Cascou’s portrait closes the series with discovery: the kind that happens when a track finds the right room, the right crowd, the right moment.
Listen to Cascou’s Playlist.
With The Voices, Level Shoes continues its portraiture series by tracing the rhythm of summer across people, places and everyday rituals.
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