One of the joys of working with leather is finding the patina. Sheets of new leather from the tanners are lovely, but new leather without a cobbler’s expertise is just a hide. In the hands of a craftsman, the same animal flank becomes art. Hand-tooled leather develops its own personality; etching and embossing give it a pattern, while buffing gives it character. And character makes it one of a kind.
Sometimes it takes days of resaturating the leather with dye, letting it dry, then polishing and buffing for hours to acquire a shade that pleases the eye and is appropriate for the shoe. Then I give the leather a pearlized depth by manual brushing. I can see grades and tones in the surface that change in the light; deep veins in the fiber give a look of age, and the sheen provides a layer of energy for the final product. My grandmother has taught me that the palette for leather and suede is limitless, like musical notes. One persnickety bride wanted her shoes dyed Tiffany blue to match the box her engagement ring came in. It took me a month to get the right saturation of color, but I did it.
I place the second shoe on my left hand, guiding it under the brushes with my right. I hear a tapping on the front window of the shop. Bret waves to me and I motion for him to meet me at the entrance.
“You’re up early,” he says as I hold the door open and usher him in.
“That’s the shoemaker’s life. And evidently the same is true for the barons of Wall Street.” I check the clock. It’s 6:30 A.M. I’ve been working in the shop since 5:00.
“I’ve got some information for you.” Bret sits down on the rolling stool at the cutting table. I sit down next to him. He opens a file. “I’ve done some digging. Let me start out by saying that you’re in the worst possible profession to get investors.”
“Great.”
“Fashion is a wild card. Many more failures than successes. Completely dependent upon the whims of the marketplace and individual spending habits. Designers are artists, and therefore considered unreliable in the business world. In a word, handcrafted anything is on shaky ground for investment purposes.” I find it odd that anything as necessary to human beings as shoes could be viewed as risky, but Bret continues, “Unless you’re Prada, or some other venerable family company that the conglomerates are looking to buy.”
“Does it matter that the business has been here since 1903?” I ask.
“It helps. It shows a level of quality and craftsmanship. That’s good. But it also says rarified to the investor.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means that your name has exposure to a very small audience, and that wedding shoes are luxury items. Given the current economy, investors aren’t looking at luxury goods for a return on their money. Right now, in fashion, it’s all about trends and a low sticker price. That’s why you see so many celebrities with clothing lines. Target, H & M, even Wal-Mart, all have a stake in low-priced high fashion. They’re the guys financing the trend.”
“Well, we don’t do what they do.”
“What you could do, and what all major designers do eventually, is lease your name and your designs. You get them mass-produced and you get a portion of the revenue stream. But even then, somebody has to believe there’s a market for you.”
“All the major wedding designers have used us from time to time. Vera Wang used to send girls down here regularly until she started manufacturing shoes with her own name on them.”
“That proves my point exactly. Traditional designers are getting the portion of the business you should be getting when they start their own affordable secondary lines. Val, if we’re going to get Angelini Shoes back in the black by finding a team of investors to make you more liquid, then you need a product that is stylish but can be mass-produced for maximum sales and profit.”
“I don’t even know if Gram would let me sell our designs. I mean, they’re my great-grandfather’s.”
“Then you’ll have to design something new. Something that reflects the Angelini brand, but is your own creation. Then you wouldn’t even need Gram’s permission. The hard truth is that nobody is interested in a shoe shop that can produce three thousand pairs a year. The profit margin is too small. But your classic wedding shoes can become the flagship items in a broader portfolio. You can continue to make one-of-a-kind shoes. As a matter of fact, you have to—that’s the Angelini hook. But you also need a product that can be mass-merchandised to pay off your existing debt, meet your balloon mortgage payments, and allow you to maintain a living and working space in one of Manhattan’s fastest gentrifying neighborhoods. This is a tall order, Val, but if Angelini Shoes is going to make it in the twenty-first century, there’s no other way.”
Bret leaves a file behind, full of research about luxury goods made by long-standing family businesses and how they work in the new century. There are spreadsheets filled with figures, and columns with comparisons, and graphs showing the growth of certain products in the last twenty years, as well as a chronicle of failed ventures. Family-owned businesses like Hermès, Vuitton, and Prada are cited. There is a section about buyouts of small enterprises by conglomerates (which seems to be the way of the world in fashion). I look around our shop, with its machinery from the turn of the last century, and our hand-drawn patterns on butcher paper, and wonder if it’s even possible to make the Angelini Shoe Company a viable name in the age of mass-produced, machine-made goods. And even if it is, am I the one to do it?
The November sky over the Hudson River is a menacing lilac with a low row of Jasper Johns–style charcoal clouds threatening rain. Occasionally, the pumpkin-colored sun peeks through to throw light on the choppy river, its whitecaps showing teeth like the edge of a serrated knife. I pull the belt on my wool coat tight, yank the brim of my baseball cap down, and tuck my long chenille scarf inside my collar.
“Here.” Roman gives me a cup of hot coffee from the deli as he sits down on the park bench, propping his vintage black leather Doc Martens on the railing in front of us. He wears faded jeans and a chocolate brown leather motorcycle jacket that looks to be at least twenty years old, and on him, it’s twenty years of sexy. Roman leans back on the bench as a runner with a chapped pink face jogs by. Roman puts his arm around me.
“It was nice of you to call,” I tell him.
“Between your shoes and my gnocchi, I only see you about half as often as I would like to.”
Roman came over when I told him I was taking a coffee break on the river. He could tell something was bothering me when I went over to the restaurant and helped him prep a supply of eggplant, and today, while we were talking on the phone, I finally told him about my father’s diagnosis. I hadn’t wanted to tell him because there’s nothing worse than bad news when a romance is in full bloom. One of us (him) would wind up being in charge of cheering up the other one (me). Who needs that?
Roman sips his coffee. “What kind of man is your father?”
I look across the river as though the answer lies somewhere on the shores of lower Tenafly. Finally, I say, “He’s Tuscan leather.”
Roman laughs. “What does that mean?”
“Tough hide, soft underside. Not glamorous. Durable. But very versatile. A lot like me. When he learns a lesson, he learns it the hard way.”
“Give me an example.” Roman pulls me closer, partly for warmth and partly because when we’re together, we can’t hold each other enough.
“Dad was an urban park ranger in Queens and he went to a convention in upstate New York in the summer of 1986. When he was there, he met a woman named Mary from Pottsville, Pennsylvania.”
“Seriously?”
“I know. Pottsville. My mother would have much preferred he fool around with a woman from fancy Franklin Lakes or ultraglam Tuxedo Park, but when you’re the wife, you don’t get to choose. Anyhow, my dad came home from the convention and everything seemed normal, except he suddenly grew a mustache and got contact lenses. I was only a kid but I kept looking at him and thinking, ‘That mustache looks like a mask. What’s Dad hiding?’”
??
?How did your mom find out?”
“She got an anonymous phone call one day while he was at work. When she hung up, she turned the color of iceberg lettuce, went into her bedroom, closed the door, and called Gram. But even as kids, we knew that my mother would never share bad news with us. So Tess, my older sister, wisely listened on the extension. When Mom hung up the phone, she put a plan in place. She very quietly packed us up and moved us right here to Perry Street with Gram and Grandpop. Of course, Mom never said she was leaving Dad. She simply invented a whole story about taking the summer to ‘rewire the Tudor,’ leaving Dad in Queens to ‘oversee the electricians.’”
“So everyone was pretending.”
“Exactly. Mom told Gram she needed time to think. But no one ever addressed with us kids what was actually going on, so we just lived in a total fog.”
“Did your father ever explain what was happening?”
“He came into the city every Sunday to have dinner with us, but Mom would disappear somehow, you know, make an excuse about running an errand or meeting a friend or something. Now I know she couldn’t bear to see him. I found out recently that she went to the movies every time Dad came to see us. She saw Flash-dance nine times that summer. It spawned her lifetime love of off-the-shoulder sweaters.”
“I really can’t wait to meet your mother,” he says wryly.
“Then, after a couple of months, Mom regrouped. She pulled a George Patton and began to strategize how to save our family. It turns out Dad is a security junkie. He’s all about safety. He checks every single window and door before he goes to bed. Mom was the adventuress. Dad was the responsible one. Mom knew that he would never give up the security of a wife for the unknowns of Mistress Mary in Pottsville.”
I take a sip of coffee before continuing. “She never mentioned the affair. Ever. She just removed herself from Dad’s world and let him experience life without her for a while. Believe me, if you knew my mom and suddenly she was gone, you’d miss the sheer force of her. She was deeply hurt, but she also knew that if she disappeared from his life, he would remember why he fell in love with her in the first place.”
“Did it work?”
“Absolutely. And I got to watch my parents fall in love for the second time. Trust me. There’s a reason parents are romantic figures before their children are born—it’s because the children can’t take it. I’d catch my mother on my father’s lap when I came home from school. Once I even caught them making out in the kitchen. My mother was so adorable and easygoing and present in the relationship that Dad couldn’t resist her. Suddenly, Mary from Pottsville was, well, Mary from Pottsville. She could never be Mike from Manhattan.”
“I never saw my parents romantic with each other.”
“Why would you? Your poor mother was exhausted from the family restaurant. Who feels romantic after twelve hours of making meatballs, frying smelts, and baking bread? I wouldn’t.”
“And Mom is still killing herself in that kitchen, while my dad wears a suit and chats up the customers. He’s the old-school restaurateur. But it works for them.”
“You know what Gram said to my mother after she got back with my father?”
“What?”
“She said, ‘Keep him on a long leash, Mike.’ In other words, don’t make him pay for a mistake for the rest of his life. Let him go, trust him. And Mom did.”
“You know what?” Roman says. “I like the idea of a long leash.”
“I figured you would.” I put my arms around his neck. As we kiss, I think about the many times I’ve walked the riverfront alone and seen couples kiss on these benches, and turned away because I wondered when and if I’d ever find someone to share a kiss and a coffee break with on a cloudy day. Now he’s here, and I wonder what he’s thinking.
“I’m marinating a flank-steak special,” he says as he stands.
I throw my head back and laugh. He pulls me up from the bench. “What is so funny?”
“I must be some kisser for you to be dreaming of marination.”
He pulls me close and kisses me again. “You have no idea what I’m dreaming about,” he says, taking my hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
“What’d I miss?” I hang up my coat in the entry and enter the workshop, which is in full shipping mode. Gram is tucking peau de soie pumps into our signature red-and-white-striped shoeboxes. June covers the shoes in a rectangle of red-and-white-striped tissue paper, places the lid on top, and affixes our logo, a gold crown with simple foil letters stamped ANGELINI SHOE COMPANY.
“Seventy-five pairs of eggshell beige pumps to Harlen Levine at Picardy Footwear in Milwaukee,” June says as she loads a box into a crate. “And now, I could use a beer.”
“Autosuggestion.” I pull my work apron on.
“We’re expecting the Palamara girl any minute,” Gram reminds me. “I’m going to have you measure her for the pattern.”
“Okay.” This is a first. Gram usually does the measurements. I look at June, who gives me an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
There’s a knock on the entrance door. The wind off the river is so strong, the bride-to-be practically blows into the shop when I open the door for her.
Rosaria is twenty-five years old, with a full face, black eyes, a small pink smile, and straight blond hair. Her mother had her wedding shoes made here, and Rosaria is carrying on the tradition. “I’m so excited.” She rummages in her purse. “Hi, everybody,” she says without looking up. Then she pulls a magazine article, stapled to a larger sheet of paper with a hand-drawn sketch of the dress, out of her purse.
“Here’s my gown. I copied an Amsale.”
“Lovely.” Gram hands the picture and sketch to me. “Valentine is going to make your shoes from start to finish.”
“Great.” Rosaria smiles. The sketch shows a simple empire-waist gown in silk faille. It has a square neck and a sheer cap sleeve. “What do you think?”
“It’s very Camelot,” I tell her. “Have you ever seen Camelot?”
She shakes her head that she hasn’t.
“Don’t you watch old movies with your grandmother?”
“Nope.”
June laughs. “Camelot is not an old movie.”
“It’s old to them. It’s forty years ago,” Gram says, continuing to pack shoes into the boxes.
“You’re getting married next July. Were you thinking of a sandal?”
“I’d love a sandal.”
I pull a book off the desk to show her the variations of the Lola design. She shrieks and points to a sleek linen sandal piped in pale pink with crisscross straps. “Oh God, that one!” she says, pointing.
“You got it. Take off your shoes and we’ll take the measurements.”
Rosaria sits down on a stool and removes her shoes and socks. I take two precut pieces of butcher paper off the shelf and write her name in the upper-right corner of both pieces. I place them on the floor in front of Rosaria, then help her step onto the center of each piece of paper. I trace around her right foot, making a pencil mark between each toe. I do the same for the left foot. She steps off the paper. I cut two pieces of thin twine off the wheel on the desk and measure the strap length for the top of her foot. I do the same for the ankle strap. I mark the string and put it in an envelope with her name on it. “Okay, now the fun part.” I open the closet of embellishments for Rosaria, who looks at the shelves and the clear plastic bins like a little girl who has landed in a treasure chest full of jewels and can choose anything she wishes.
We are very proud of the components we use to make shoes. Gram travels to Italy every year to buy supplies. When you cook, it’s all about quality ingredients, and the same is true for making shoes. Sumptuous fabrics, fine leather, and hand-tooled embellishments make all the difference and define our brand. Loyalty plays into Gram’s work ethic also. She buys our leather and suede from the Vechiarelli family of Arezzo, Italy, the descendants of the same tanner my great-grandfather used.
Most cobblers have farming in their
background. The Angelinis were farmers who became butchers. Butchers often got into the tanning business because it was more profitable to sell the prepared leather instead of selling the skins. My great-grandfather made the leap from butcher to shoemaker as a result of timing.
Early in the twentieth century, a movement occurred in Italy in which artisans (shoemakers, jewelers, tailors, potters, silver-and goldsmiths, glass makers) taught young men who desperately needed work the trade of their choice. The masters would go into small villages and teach classes in their area of expertise. The apprentice system is a mainstay in the working life of Italians, but this particular movement was as political as it was artistic, born of the need to lift the Italians out of poverty after the war. The movement spread, thus the proliferation of handcrafted Italian goods, some of which still exist today. For the families who trained together, and opened their own businesses, branding was born.
Gram buys the leather for our shoes in Arezzo, and the nails and binding from La Mondiale, the oldest cobbler supplier in Italy. For embellishments, she goes down to Naples, where she works with a young, creative team, Carolina and Elisabetta D’Amico, who create handmade jeweled ornaments for shoes. Gram often provides a rough sketch of what she wants, as well as choosing from their extensive stock. The D’Amicos make buckles and ornaments inlaid with gleaming crystals—white-hot rhinestones; dazzling faux emeralds, rubies, and cabochons. Their costume-jewel embellishments are so opulent, we call them Verdura for the feet, as they could easily be mistaken for the real thing.
We also carry a wide selection of handmade fabric ornaments, including velvet bows so delicate we position them on the thin leather straps with tweezers before sewing them on. We carry silk-flower embellishments, bold calla lilies made of raw silk, innocent daisies of organza and tulle, and silk rosettes in every color combination, from ruby red to deep purple spiked with moss green velvet leaves. We have a selection of tiny numbers and letters, cut out of metallic gold, silver, and copper leather, which we often sew into the shaft of the shoe. We often place the bride and groom’s initials or the date of the wedding inside the shoe for an heirloom touch.