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 Shoe
facts - Featured Monthly Designer
"It's
not what you put on, but what you take off..."
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Throughout
his 40 year career, David Evins turned out classic shoes that
were as modish as they were comfortable. The wealthy and the
powerful flocked to him because they recognised that he was
a master of his craft. Even the demanding Duchess of Windsor,
the embodiment of snobbishly good taste, routinely
commissioned shoes from him and hailed him as a genius.
He shod every President's wife from Mamie Eisenhower on and
designed both pairs of Nancy Regan's Inaugural pumps.
Movie
stars loved him because his creations embodied their own personalities
as much as the characters they were meant to portray.
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created glamorous mules for Ava Gardner, clunky pumps for his favourite
dinner date, Judy Garland and leopard skin bootees for the aloof
Marlene Dietrich, as well as the low-heeled pumps Grace Kelly wore
when she married Prince Rainer.
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the age of 13, Evins emigrated to the United States from England
and went on to study illustration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
He found his métier as a shoe designer after being fired
from Vogue (an editor said his shoe renderings 'reeked of artistic
license'),
when he went to work as a pattern maker. His talents rapidly developed
and in 1941 he secured a contract with I. Miller to produce his
own label. Eight years later the fashion industry presented 'the
King of Pumps' with a coveted Coty Award for his décolleté
shell pumps. |
Other
innovations followed. Evins secured halter-backed sandals with Velcro
and was the first designer to dye alligator in vivid colours like
turquoise. He dismantled trophies and transformed their stems into
heels and like Ferragamo before him, hr fashioned vamps from fishing
line. An unassuming man, Evins abhorred fussiness and unnecessary
ornamentation. "Sheer simplicity is my forte," he told
Footwear News in 1987. "It's not what you put on but what you
take off" - a philosophy reflected in the refinement of his
creations. He himself was usually buttoned into a Turnbull &
Asser shirt and Chavet tie when he sat in his factory sewing his
own shoes or carving lasts alongside his frock coated employees.
"He
was wonderfully contradictory," remembers his nephew Reed Evins,
who currently designs for Cole-Haan. "He was an absolute perfectionist
who'd fly into a rage and reject 300 pairs of shoes if their black
satin uppers contained a tinge too much grey. On the other hand,
he was anything but a prima donna. He was always floored when he
won an award. He'd stand in the middle of the factory looking stunned
and say,'No kidding?' "
This
article is reproduced from 'Shoes: A Celebration of Footwear' by
Linda O'Keefe.
Woodman Publishing 1997. Find
out more
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