Buon giorno! Greetings from Italia, land of great wine, delicious food, top rate fashion, and, most importantly for us, our wonderful shoe artisans.

We’re here for a week to work on, believe it or not, the Spring/Summer 2014 collection.  Yes, you read right- even though it’s still feeling like Winter 2013 (where are you warm weather?!), we’re already thinking next year.

First stop on our trip was Bologna, where we attended Lineapelle, a world renown leather show. Basically it’s a huge trade show where tanneries from around the globe come to show the newest colors, finishes, and trends in leather, and all the component and accessory companies (buckles, studs, soles, heels, etc.)  display their latest findings as well. It’s complete sensory overload and thank goodness we have a great team to help us navigate through it.

Meet Giuseppe and Michael.

Giuseppe (Left) and Michael (Right)

Giuseppe is part of what I like to call our “Engineering” team. He knows everyone. We walk into the booths at the trade show and it’s like walking in with George Clooney.  You want a sample of a leather but the sales person says you can’t have one at this booth? You go get Giuseppe, tell him what you want, he pulls a pocket knife out of his bag, cuts you a sample right in front of the sales person who told you no cutting, smiles, tells the sales person “grazie” and walks away.  It’s awesome.  He’s Italian, and helps us source great suppliers for all the components of our shoes, from the platforms to the leathers to the trimmings and everything in between.  He and his team are also the ones who turn our technology into reality- creating and testing the prototypes that eventually become the finished product that we send to the manufacturing facility for production.

Michael is the designer who we’ve been working with, starting with this Spring/Summer 2014 collection. He lives in New York, but hails from the Tuscan region, speaks fluent Italian (verrrry helpful), and has tons of experience in the shoe industry. Most importantly, he gets our line. Right out of the gate, his initial sketches were fashion forward, but also fully incorporated our technology so that we maintain our “beautiful shoes without the pain” credo.

Using the expertise of both of these guys, we walked around all day sifting through hundreds of leathers.

Beautiful White Textured Leather

Michael, Giuseppe, and Julie studying a new burnished finishing technique

Mountains of Leather

Erin and Julie at Lineapelle

After the show, we drove back to Florence, drank a glass of wine, and passed out after a very long day.

The next day we regained feeling in our legs (our American thighs were not used to all this European walking . . . sad but it’s so), and headed to meet up again with Giuseppe and Michael and select colors for Spring 2014.

Julie and Michael making selections

Stay tuned.  Next up is testing out the prototypes to make sure the new styles feel as good as they look. Ciao!

- Erin