Interview with Sonia Parizzi

Sonia Parizzi attended the Five-Day Intensive Shoemaking Course in Berkeley about a year ago. She had been involved in the footwear business as a designer, but this was the first time that she made a pair of shoes. We have found her experience very inspiring and we wanted to interview her to find out more about the process of becoming and being a designer.

Prescott & Mackay: Please tell us something about your background and what has led you to become a designer?

Sonia Parizzi: I was lucky to be born as a designer and artist. At the age of 4, I was already painting fabric, and continued until the age of 14. I attended French pattern and sewing classes, started selling to friends, and soon to an increasingly affluent clientele. I also painted Huge Facades.

After graduating as an Industrial Designer, I started to sell my own clothing ‘Sonia P & Sonia L’ to the best boutiques. The next step was ‘Sonia Parizzi’ brand going into shoes. All over Brazil, I was in charge of the Design and Marketing, including design for other brands such as ‘Alpargatas’, which manufactures the renowned ‘Havaianas’.

Coliriozz

P&M: What is the idea behind your designs? What does your brand try to tell people and what makes you unique?

SP: I just followed colour trends: my heart was the trend, and I was recognized as a trend launcher. The brand started to appear everywhere and it was constantly published in all magazines, such Vogue, W and Elle, as well as TV interviews and at fashion shows in New York. I was even invited to sell at Bergdoff Goodman, but I could not produce the amount they required.

P&M: How did the idea of making your own shoes come into your mind and why chose Prescott & Mackay?

SP: I was looking for the best and found it. Their resumes are impressive.

P&M: Please tell us your experience at the San Francisco shoe class and what you have learnt.

SP: I learnt how to make a pattern, mount a shoe by hand and the use of new materials in the market. Melissa Needham was a great teacher whose patience is tremendous as well as her knowledge. She is also a good and pleasant person.

Zelebrazz

P&M: Please give some advice to people who are interested in shoe and bag design, particularly those who want to start up their businesses.

SP:  Push your creation from inside out and to the unthinkable. Also, make a brand that reflects your personality. If you knock door to door selling it, you will get noticed. Negative answers are awful, but make us stronger. It is fundamental to take short classes in Marketing and Administration or to pay someone to do it, a friend can helps at the beginning.  Upon finding an investor, negotiates a good contract: we are not slaves.

Sonia has sent us some pictures from her designs. The models Conliriozz and Zelebrazz are designed for silicone or plastic shoes, where the colour white means to be transparent. She manufactured the Yellow’zz in Brazil many years ago, remaining like a kind of Converse sandal. When she moved to the USA, she had two interviews with them, but even when though it was a great prospect, it did not work because she could not move to Boston.

Yellowzz

Sonia is currently creating a new great line and looking for investors in the USA, meanwhile she has not stopped appearing in magazines and newspapers.

Prescott & Mackay runs Two-Day Beginners Shoemaking and Five-Day Intensive Shoemaking in Berkeley, San Francisco throughout the year, and the next courses are scheduled for April 2013.

Making shoes in the evening – week 5 to 7 (via La Maison de Florence)

How’s our shoemaking evening class going? Let’s follow Florrie’s diary to find out what has happened in the past three weeks.

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Where was I? Oh yes, I have finished making the pattern of my shoes and started to cut the materials. The picture below is the cut leather: the cherry blossom pinky white ostrich for shoe upper, and the fire orange ostrich for the heels. 上次我在“设计师之路：全手工英式皮鞋制作日记”里說到鞋的紙樣已經做好，開始切割皮料了。下面就是已經切好的皮子，米色帶珊瑚紅點（其實整體看來是淡淡的櫻花粉色）的鴕鳥皮是鞋面，火橘色的鴕鳥皮是鞋跟。 … Read More

via La Maison de Florence

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The next shoemaking evening class will start from January 14, 2011. Click here to book

Making shoes in the evening – week 1 to week 4

The new term of shoemaking evening class has started since September 10, 2010. In 10 weeks’ time, five students in the class are going to start from scatch and make a pair of shoes. Are you interested in what they have done in the first four weeks? Read one student’s diary via the link below!
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A pair of good shoes, like a good partner, is a magic. Everyone has his/her own definition of what is ‘good’, and mine is a well combination of comfort and appearance. Good shoes support your whole body weight without any complaint, walk with you as far as they can and never make you feel tired, while at the same time get you envy eyes from people.  It’s not easier to find shoes like that than finding a right partner. Some people may have never f … Read More

via La Maison de Florence
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The next shoemaking evening class will start from January 14, 2011. Book early for two months in advance to enjoy our Early Bird Discount!
Click here to book

Jane Scheinmann and her slippers

 – interviewed and written by Florrie Juan Huang

If you have started up a shoe business or are going to do so, you might find the following story of Jane Scheinmann, a past student of Prescott & Mackay, helpful and inspiring:

P&M's past student: Jane Scheinmann

Jane describes herself as a “complete shoe-aholic”. After studying hotel management in Switzerland she worked in the hotel industry and then as an event organiser. But after a couple of years her independent nature and market sense pushed her to do something more creative. Having a business concept already to mind, she found the Prescott & Mackay shoemaking course via the internet in 2001 and took the Beginners Shoemaking course over a weekend.

Her idea was clear and simple: handmade, fashionable and comfortable slippers. She wanted her customers, who were into shoes just like she was, not to have to get back home after a hard day’s work and face a pair of brown and boring slippers. “At that time, no matter how funky the shoes were in the world, slippers were always very granny-like: nothing fashionable; nothing colourful; nothing new or different” says Jane, “it was either old-fashioned or bright red marabou-style – I wanted to do something in the middle.” 

When the weekend had finished, she found herself “totally, totally inspired by the class”. With tutor Melissa’s help, she sourced the slipper material – sheepskin – on the south coast of England, designed the slippers, and used Melissa’s contacts to find people to cut out the soles and uppers, and sew and bind them for her. She managed to complete more than 30 pairs of handmade slippers and attended that year’s show – House & Gardens’s ‘Spirit of Christmas’ – at Olympia, marking the formal launch of her slipper business – all these things happened in the three months after her first class at P&M, a truly Herculean effort!

Jane Scheinmann's first Ruby slipper collection for 2001's Christmas fair

She named her company “Ruby Slippers”, inspired by Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz. You can’t help stroking these slippers when you hold them – they are all handmade, all leather, so soft and very, very cute.  They received a good response at Olympia from trade professionals despite their high cost, and she received two orders, one of them from Fenwick’s.

a closer look to Ruby slippers the first collection

However, this was when Jane encountered her first big obstacle – her orders were too small for the manufacturers to want to get involved. Although she finally fulfilled them, the business couldn’t go on without the problem being solved.

The following year, she was attending a footwear show and happened to get talking to someone who – unbelievably – turned out to be one of the biggest producers of slippers for supermarkets in the UK, including Next, Asda, and Marks & Spencers. His company was called ‘Ever Direct’ and they joined forces to launch their first collaboration branded ‘Ruby+Ed’. With several production lines already set up in the Far East and financial support from her new business partner, Jane was able to sit down to work on her designs and the first collection of Ruby+Ed’s was a huge success: Brown’s ordered the most expensive style (pictured below) with a retail price of £150, and a large amount of other styles were ordered by House of Fraser.

Ruby+Ed first collection: style Cobi

As John Lennon once wrote: “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”  Jane was finding that her vision of using only the highest-quality leather for her hand-made slippers was coming under pressure from competitors who had started making similar-looking alternatives with synthetic materials at a fraction of the cost. Right at the moment when she was confronted with this all-too-common situation, Jane discovered that she was pregnant, and in 2004 she decided to sell the brand to her business partner. She is now the proud mother of three lovely little girls.

some styles from the first collection of Ruby+Ed

When looking back Jane seems to have most enjoyed the conceptual aspect of the business, “the initial set-up was my ‘thing’. I am more interested in creating a product and seeing it go to the market. Ruby+Ed is still going and now you can find much more funky slippers in the marketplace than before – we kind of started a trend… We started up a business and the reaction was what I hoped it would be, that was enough. I have no feelings of regret.” 

Now her youngest daughter is two years old and Jane wants to start something new – working as a fashion image consultant. “What I’m interested in is working with individual people who are a bit lost with the image they are presenting, especially women who have children, their self-image changes after they become a mother – the image they portray doesn’t feel right for them. I want to help them to find themselves and make them feel comfortable and happy. It has nothing to do with celebrities or people with a bunch of money- I would like to shop with them from Evans to Yves Saint Laurent. ” Jane has already had four clients and got very positive feedback; she also plans to help ladies with breast cancer boost their confidence after treatment.

I then ask Jane what she considers to be the highlight of her career. “Definitely launching the slippers!” she says with a smile, “that’s a huge achievement but without Melissa’s help it wouldn’t have happened. The course really inspired me. It was very detailed, quite physical, and I really really enjoyed it. It’s a challenge and I definitely would like to do it again just because it was such a creative process and so intense – you have a weekend to produce a pair of shoes, and all the time you’re busy thinking about what you are doing – it’s a nice feeling especially when you have children; you can temporarily get your mind away from them!”

What advice would she like to give to our students? ” Definitely take a course, because it’s a real insight. If I had done Melissa’s course in my early twenties… ” we both laugh, and she continues, “but for starting up a shoe business, you’ll have to really, really want it. Shoemaking is particularly hard to actually ‘crack the nut’. It needs a lot of time. If you can find something not available in the market, then you’ll enter a place where competition isn’t so heavy. And think carefully about the aim of your business: are you in it to satisfy your own creativity, or to make money, to survive, or break-even?”

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Is Jane’s story inspring for you? Please leave your comments below.
The course Jane took is the Two-Day Beginners Shoemaking Course
For image consultation, wardrobe clearance or shopping guidance, please contact Jane Scheinmann via 07770755098 and jane.s@me.com

Florrie’s Diary on the Sandal Making Course: My First 100% handmade shoes!

Florrie is a beginner at shoemaking. She took the sandal making course at Prescott & Mackay last Saturday and she is sharing her feelings here with great pleasure. Let’s explore the course with her!

I am definitely a handicraft lover. I bake complicated cakes and sew some of my own clothes, but knew nothing about shoemaking before. With 100% curiosity and excitement I took this sandal-making course on Saturday. The first time in my life, I completed a sandal from leather cutting, shaping to glueing, all by myself! (Err…well, 90% by my self to be honest…if you have to count the part helped by the tutor…)

What is sandal? “A light shoe, especially worn in warm weather, consisting of a bottom part held onto the foot bystraps” (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary). With heel or flat. So I knew that I was going to see a lot of straps, or leather bands. We made the flat ones today and I wonder if it’s because the course today requires no previous shoemaking experience, while heels are some kind of advanced-level thing. We can choose from the following two styles (they are made by the tutor) and I’ve chosen the red ones with thinner straps.

10am, I was seated in the classroom in Warren Street with the other five students. Three of them have taken the shoemaking courses here before or have had some relevant experience, while me and the other two are completely beginners. We started by choosing the last (the yellow stuff in the photo), the sole and insole according to our sizes.

Tutor Sebastian helped us one by one to make sure if the last and sole really fitted our feet. I am such a ‘standard’ size 5 so the first step seemed really easy to me since there’s no need for any modification!

And then we decided how the sandals would look like. This is the most creative part and also my favourite. It’s also interesting to see the others’ creative ideas. I chose a crocodile-style soft leather as upper leather, a colourful striped leather as the sock, and a creamy white leather as the binding. The leather that the school provided is vegetable-tanned instead of mineral-tanned (usually chromium), giving the finished product a natural look whilst also being environmentally friendly. You can tell the difference by checking the color of the other side of the hides—chrome tanned skins are blue.

The next step was cutting. We used a special silver pen and ruler to mark the patterns and cut them with very sharp scalpels. To make the look more perfect, I even used the “sausage knife” to trim the edge of every piece. It was particularly hard work for me because the leather I chose was too soft. Now I understand why the tutor tried to persuade me to choose a thicker leather; it wasn’t just because it would be more durable…

We then punched holes on the straps and put some “Sam Browns” on them. I like the colour of these metal studs very much. Their antique colour really suits the vege-tanned leather.

  

Now came the most painstaking part! We should mark the position of each strap on the skeleton attached to the insole, and carefully cut off extra skeleton. It took me more than an hour to finish this! And the tutor kindly offered his help when I got so irritated by the hammer and pliers.

   

Finally I reached the last step: glue. I was too slow in the leather-cutting and shaping part, so I only finished one sandal. The other one still needs to be glued…But look at the finished one, isn’t it pretty? I am really proud of it. Let’s give it a front shoot 🙂

Another student Liz, who has taken quite a lot courses, made amazing sandals. I love the idea of the tassel. This is her work!

Time flew in this whole day’s class. I have to say this is so addictive and nothing can compare to the happiness of seeing my own handmade shoes, especially when working with nice tutor and classmates. I start to think my next sandals and I’ve already got loads of new design ideas in my mind!

One Student’s Experience at P&M

Here is the story of one our students and how she found Footwear Design after her struggles in Fashion.  She is now interning with a Footwear Designer and planning her career in the footwear industry.

When did you become interested in Fashion?

When I was a little girl my dad used to invent original bedtime stories to tell me each night. He would sit on the edge of my bed and ask for a cast of characters to weave into a tale. While my brother would ask for knights and monsters and forest animals, I always had one character- a girl, in an elaborately described dress. My poor dad must have had a hard time with my stories, now that I think about it. The clothes were always more of a main character than any of the actual characters. So I guess you could say I’ve been interested in fashion from the very beginning.

What did you do when you first finished school?

I tested out of high school one year early, determined to start real life. The next few years were spent working odd jobs, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I decided to follow my heart and go for design.
First I attended the California College of the Arts for one year. My focus was on fashion, but first year is very similar to Foundation year, so I studied everything-woodworking, fine art, art history, and so on. A couple of years later I attended the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. FIDM is a technical, industry-focused two-year program. Though I learned a lot about pattern cutting and sewing, the industry focus was very limiting and I never had the opportunity or time to explore design.On a whim I applied Central St Martins because it was a much more artistic school. Two terms before finished out my degree at FIDM, I moved to London to start again at CSM.

How did you make that progression to footwear?

I was studying fashion and print design at Saint Martins, and realised I wasn’t getting what I wanted from it. When I left the school I was bored by fashion design and ready to try my hand at something else. So I sought out other things that interested me and found footwear. I’ve always been excited by inventive, boundary-pushing shoes, so I thought, “why not push some boundaries and design some ridiculous things myself?”

How did you discover P&M?

Even though P&M holds classes in my hometown of San Francisco, I didn’t find out about the school until I was living in London. I first came across the website when I did a search for footwear design schools in London. I mentioned it to a friend and found that some of my friends had taken corset classes at P&M and had a fantastic time. So I signed onto the first Two Day Beginners Shoemaking course and decided to give it a go.

Do you think your background in fashion is a bonus in Footwear?

Oh yes. The training I’ve had in sewing and pattern cutting has been incredibly useful. But shoes and clothing are two very different things. One big difference I noticed right away was that when I was studying fashion I thought about designs from the top, downward. There are points of the body you hang fabric from, such as shoulders or hips, to use gravity to your advantage. But with footwear you must think about design from the ground up. Literally. If you want things to drape or hang, you first need to build a sturdy structure from which they can hang.

What is your favourite aspect of working in this area?

It might sound silly, but my favourite thing about shoemaking is learning the variety of skills that go into it. Unlike fashion where I would spend days sewing and sewing and sewing some more, in shoemaking I can really broaden my skill set by using all sorts of tools, machines, and materials. When fashioning a pair of shoes you’ll find that one-minute you’ll be handling supple, delicious leathers and the next hardened, thick hides. You’ll pound nails into the sole and delicately pull fabrics. You glue, you stretch, you shape, sew, skive, and tool, so that you can proudly say, “I made this.”