Bella | Ha Global

Bella | Ha was named after Isabella and Ha, identical Vietnamese twin girls separated at birth but later reunited in an incredible cross-cultural story of love and perseverance. Founders Keely and Mick Solimene adopted Isabella from a Khánh Hòa Province orphanage in Vietnam, returning to the country after learning she had an identical twin sister.

So began their cultural odyssey. After years visiting Vietnam with their six children, the Solimenes’ long search for Ha ended at a tiny coastal village without basic infrastructure.

Once Ha was adopted into their American family, they realized how divergent, yet alike, humanity is. Their eyes were forever opened. “We believe in one basic tenet: That we are all individual and unique, yet inseparably linked,” says Keely. “We can be the generation that shifts the paradigm.”

The creation of the Bella | Ha luxury sandal line lets us bring this ethos to life. One single yet powerful design, separated only by variations in color, honors humanity and the planet.

Bella | Ha makes luxurious Italian shoes, but we are so much more than a shoe company.

Bella | Ha created its sandals as a reference point to the company’s powerful backstory, and as a means to give back to a world from which we take so much. At our very core, we believe people can change the world with the purchase of a pair of shoes.

Travel has inspired us to give back to the incredible people we’ve met on our journeys. Every stamp on our passport is a lesson in what it means to be a citizen of this world and a reminder of our responsibility to take care of the planet and the people in it.

During our travels, those who most touched our lives as we searched for our daughter’s twin were mothers and their babies. As so many women give birth in darkness, contributing to high infant and maternal mortality rates, we partnered with We Care Solar and their Solar Suitcase initiative to light every birth.

Every purchase of Bella | Ha shoes helps us send solar suitcases to light off-the-grid clinics. Each collection helps a different area of the world.

“We like to say that our story begins and ends with a suitcase,” says Keely. “When you pack up your suitcase and take off to the far corners of the world, you see things that will change you forever. We have seen so many things on our travels…both wonderful and heartbreaking.” Our partnership with We Care Solar brings this full circle.

Hand-made in Florence, Italy, by a family of legacy shoemakers, Bella | Ha shoes are elegant in their simplicity. Each technically designed, luxuriously thin sole weighs just 300kg and measures 5mm. The leather insole and the recycled rubber sole are laser stamped with the Bella | Ha logo, as is the nickel-free stud found on the leather-lined upper. Hues are inspired by humanity’s diverse skin tones and Nature’s exquisite palette. 

Bella | Ha launched with The Khánh Hòa Collection—a deeply personal collection inspired by the lovely people and mesmerizing surrounds of the southern Vietnamese province by the same name. Vietnam played a special role in this namesake collection and the Bella | Ha brand as a whole. It was where founders Keely and Mick Solimene adopted Isabella (Bella) from an orphanage, and the country they got to know intimately as they searched for, and later adopted, her identical twin sister, Ha.

The original collection was sustainably made from salmon skin, leaving a literal and metaphorical “light footprint” on the earth. Each pair of shoes also had a tiny metal tag with the longitude and latitude of the region benefiting from the shoes’ purchase.

The second collection, the Zanzibar Collection, brought Bella | Ha to Africa. Inspired by the colorful Zanzibar Region of Tanzania where the design was pulled straight from this beautiful corner of the globe, like salmon skin footbeds and delicate rope tassel. As in the Khánh Hòa collection, longitude/latitude tags honored the place.

For both collections, Bella | Ha was inspired by mothers and babies around the world. To serve them, Bella | Ha literally lights the way with We Care Solar and its Solar Suitcases, bringing light to area birth clinics.

Bella | Ha has continued spreading light to birth clinics in Sierra Leone and Uganda through We Care Solar's Light Every Birth initiative.