The Last – Prescott & Mackay’s Blog

INTERVIEW: Sebastian Tarek

Bespoke shoemaker Sebastian Tarek is full of surprises. Having grown up in Australia surrounded by the world of the fashion elite, his mother being the Editor of Cleo magazine, he chose to follow what turned out to be another family tradition, on the Polish side– shoemaking. Here he talks about his love of processes, his approach to teaching and how the film of Hans Christian Andersen started it all

How have you learnt your craft?

I started off attending evening classes in footwear during my final year of high school in Sydney and then when I moved to England I studied at Cordwainers Technical College in Hackney, East London. I have to say though, that study was only the introduction to the real learning for me and it wasn’t until I started working in the field that my training really began. The first time I saw shoemaking in a truly practical sense was during a two year work placement back in Australia. Working for a shoemaker was something of a ‘baptism of fire’. No longer was it a case of ‘Ive got a pair of shoes I’d like to make’ but ‘these are the shoes that have to get made’! So I learnt first hand just how much discipline and application working in the trade requires in order to get what is a vast amount of work done in the time available. I then went on to have a small business of my own for a while in Sydney making one-off fashion footwear and shoes for fashion shows. Then in 2003 I moved back to England and it was during this time that my career took a definite turn in direction towards made to measure and bespoke footwear. I managed to get a work placement at fashion footwear label, Georgina Goodman making shoes in the couture studio and after a year there I moved on to work for bespoke shoemakers, James Taylor and Son. I’d always known that I wanted to specialise in traditional shoe constructions such as men’s welting, where the shoe is stitched to the sole, and it was at Taylor’s [sic] that I gained my introduction to that.

What led you to working in shoemaking?

The story of how I was initially attracted to a life in shoemaking is, in fact quite corny. I was over in England staying with my Uncle and Aunt in Surrey one Christmas and contemplating what I wanted to do with my life, when the Danny Kaye film about the famous fairytale writer and shoemaker, Hans Christian Anderson came on the television. Watching it I found myself thinking what a fantastic lifestyle he had, roaming the countryside, telling stories to kids and making shoes! I decided then I wanted that life, and that in order to facilitate it I’d better learn how to make shoes. So I booked a flight back to Australia, ditched high school and enrolled in evening classes in footwear. What is strange is that I never had any inclination towards the more practical subjects at school despite, as my Polish grandmother finally ended up telling me (half way through my first year of evening classes) that I do in fact come from a very long line of shoemakers in Poland stretching back as far as the 1600s!

If you had not discovered shoemaking, what do you think you might have become?

It is highly likely that I’d still be working in hospitality as that’s what I did to support myself financially whilst studying and when I was first working in footwear. I also come from a family in the fashion media, so there has always been an interest in the magazine world too.

How has your fashion media family background influenced your career?

I have benefited from having a family in fashion, and as much as I’m loathe to take advantage of family contacts, that’s how I got my introduction to Gerogina Goodman. A family friend was interviewing her and offered to have a word to see if she was interested in meeting me, she was and that’s how that started. The way I see it, you can’t turn your nose up at these opportunities as it’s too hard to get a foothold in the industry otherwise. In terms of my career path, I think maybe one of the reasons I did veer more towards more handmade, less manufactured fashion footwear was because of the antipathy I had towards the industry as a result of my parent’s involvement. I still have quite a lot of friends who work in fashion but it’s a pretty cut-throat industry and not always particularly pleasant or fair.

What are the most important things you’re trying to impart to your students?

I have always believed that it’s about passing on understanding as opposed to a few specific skills. I want to help people to have a go and have confidence to rely on their own intuition when going forward with the new skills they have learnt. One of the most important aspects of the class is that we focus on teaching the ‘take-home’ skills intrinsic to made to measure footwear. This means that you shouldn’t find yourself in the position of having to source everything pre-made as you can make your own at home. Also, because I find that there’s an awful lot of preciousness in shoemaking, I try to impress that it’s only when you start the process that you can begin to fully understand it. Overall if you come away from the made to measure class with a general understanding of the way a pair of bespoke shoes are put together and what’s involved, then that’s a fundamental start. You can get on to the finer details later on in your career.

What piece of equipment do you find indispensable in your work as a shoemaker, and what in you experience would you advise an aspiring footwear designer might invest in first?

That’s difficult to answer as there are so many tools, but I’d say get a good knife and to learn how to sharpen it. I wasted quite a lot of time in the first couple of years of making shoes privately trying to get my knife sharp enough so I didn’t keep screwing up the shoes that I was working on.

What is the most satisfying aspect of making shoes?

I’m never going to make a fortune out of bespoke shoes so it’s a good thing I enjoy the actual process itself. Working in men’s bespoke shoes is geeky as hell- it really is a bit of a nerd sport! I’ll get huge satisfaction, for instance, when I’ve managed to get a glassy edge around a heel, or when I’ve managed to create a beautiful shape near a toe. The highlights of the day, week or month are always those individual skills which have been executed as well as possible.

Where do you find inspiration for your work?

In the stock work I do for other firms like for, Cleverly’s [sic], who I think make some of the most beautiful men’s shoes in the world, you’re inspired to do the best job you can to reflect the contribution that others have made towards that pair of shoes. In my private work, while I’ve never considered myself a designer but a shoemaker who’s designed the shoes that they’ve made, I’ve always been drawn to very simple classic styles and architectural silhouettes. Having said that, my starting point in bespoke is always the foot. What the foot is doing always puts limitations on what you can and can’t do when it comes to creating an elegant pair of shoes for a client. For example I have very wide feet and so as a result I tend to make very long styles for myself to help conceal it.

What has been the highlight of your career so far? Have you made shoes for anyone well known?

Working for other firms, of course, but it’s hard to pick a highlight since as a shoemaker, being completely absorbed and obsessed with processes and the craft, who I made a shoes for is far less important to me as how well I made them. Having said that, I was quite chuffed the first time I did a range of catwalk shoes and they were worn by model Missy Rayder who had been flown in specially for fashion week in Australia. Another highlight was making a pair of shoes as a gift for the editor of Australian Vogue, Kirsty [Clements], a family friend, and who then kindly did me a little write up in Vogue!

Would you recommend going out on your own?

It depends on what you want to do. If you want to be in bespoke footwear then I’d say no, avoid going out on your own like the plague! It’s an ever diminishing market that is largely driven forward by heritage and to try and establish that kind of heritage would be difficult. I mean I’ve worked for a couple of firms that are members of The West End Master Bootmakers’ Association which, say 20 years ago would have had about 15 or so members and today there are only 4. Basically they’ve all been taken over by each other, one by one as the market has reduced, so even for the established firms it’s become harder and harder to stay a part of that market. If on the other hand you want to be a shoe designer, then I’d say yes- although I have to be honest, having spent a period at Georgina Goodman when I first moved over here, with naive assumptions about the way you start up an eponymous label, I was quite surprised. Full credit to them, they’ve been amazingly committed and driven with their goal, but there is a lot stuff involved that is not necessarily what I got involved in footwear to be doing.

Are you talking about the commercial aspects?

Yes, how you to actually drive a business forward. There’s a lot of stuff that’s very removed from actually making shoes, like making sure your marketing is geared towards hitting the right market. I had a very helpful conversation with the Managing Director of Georgina Goodman when I first started there. He was giving me some advice about what to do if I ever moved back to Australia to start up a business, which was my ultimate goal at the time. He asked me ‘do you want to be a shoemaker or a business person?’ to which I replied ‘I want to be a shoemaker’. He said, ‘well don’t open up a shop, don’t get staff, don’t get involved with all those things that require you to take care of business’.

www.sebastiantarek.com

Two-Day Made to Measure Techniques