Homegrown shoes with flair
EXQUISITE: SANDALS, BOOTS AND PUMPS IN LEATHER
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. This week she is in search of shoe rescue.
Idressed before it was light this morning. It’s my only excuse as I wince at what’s on my feet. Being in the House of Cinnamon makes it so much worse, extremely bad in fact. We’re drinking perfect coffee from cute houndstooth and gingham mugs but my feet are as far back under my chair as they’ll go.
Everything else looks perfect too. One wall has a delicate lilac painted on it. Another is covered in shelves of the new season’s beautiful pumps, mules and light brogues. I am surrounded by exquisite footwear. Sandals and boots stand further along. Frances Edwards, the designer-owner, looks equally perfect in her silk shirt. Behind her desk I bet she’s wearing a perfect pair of two-tone leather pumps.
My dun linen pointed flats look muddy and mottled. When I squirm I also see some of the sole section fraying like hessian. Heather tries on boots. I’ve noticed some pale green pumps but they’re over there and I’m over here, with inbetween floor space to cover. I really can’t do it in a chair.
I want to look more closely at the homegrown, that’s Joburgmade, fashion items displayed. For very long I’ve hunted for Joburg-produced shoes. Here they are. Perhaps it’s a minor detail that their current cobbler is in Cape Town. The designs and production are effected from this very room in Parktown. Under her mood board I can make out a design Frances is working on with a sample of pale snaky leather. Vegan shoes are next.
For crossing the room, I figure it’ll be best to be animated, to make my lumpy pumps look like a blur.
“Once you’ve started creating something, you can do anything,” says Frances, surprised, herself, at novel expansions in her busi- ness. A co-worker has designed and made the eco-conscious, Taku shopping bags with clever handles. On Frances’ slender fingers are a stack of covetable brass rings from Kenya, which she sells too but I’m single-mindedly seeking Joburg stuff.
I see the start of a crisp linen and cotton capsule clothing line, made in Joburg, also from the House of Cinnamon, though shoes will always be the main attraction. I’m close to the green pumps. They are my size but not my foot width, something the House of Cinnamon factors into orders. I could have made a fresh minty exit in these today.
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