DESIGNING YOUR SHOES

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 3, 1 September 1924, Page 53

DESIGNING YOUR SHOES

Fashions in women’s shoes now are quite as important as dress and millinery fashions, for since the arrival of the short skirt practically all women are well shod. Before submitting his range of samples to the buyers a designer must carefully consider the following details: —l. What shape and length of toe will women prefer this summer—long and pointed, medium length and rounded, or short and stumpy? 2. What height of heel will be most fashionable, and also what shape—Cuban, Louis, or Wurttemberg? 3. The shapes of tabs, ornaments, and trimmings. 4. Will symmetrical curves and graceful lines or blunt and contrasting lines be the vogue? All these things having been carefully considered, the designer gets his designs and patterns prepared, and usually has trial shoes made, seeing that all the operations incidental to the manufacture are carefully done. When these shoes are finished a number of shoe experts usually meet and discuss them, suggesting alterations, modifications, and colours, until all are agreed as to what each sample shoe shall be in shape of toe, heel, design, and colour. Then the designer gets out a complete range of samples ready for the travellers, who will place them before the buyers. These buyers, being footwear experts and able to anticipate changes of fashion, may buy from only four or five samples out of a range of perhaps forty or fifty, the remainder, representing —perhaps months of careful study, then being worthless. A successful designer of footwear must therefore be not only an artist in his designing, but also a thoroughly practical shoemaker, for no matter how carefully a shoe is designed, if it is not made and finished as the designer wishes, it is, in most cases, time and material wasted.