In 1938, at Munich time, there has been no employment in the village of Killyleagh in Northern Ireland for twelve years. An abandoned flax mill became the only signal that the inhabitants had ever lived in something but absolute poverty. But in that 12 months, two Czech brothers called Erik, and Gerhard Utitz started within the abandoned flax mill, a branch of the tannery which have been their family enterprise in Prague because 1795; exports from Prague had stopped, and this becomes a try and keeps their exchange with Great Britain.
When Hitler marched into Prague, the Utitz brothers slipped out, leaving behind lock, inventory, and barrel, but taking with them only one skilled tanner. The little department in the converted flax mill became the principle tannery for Uta suède. The villagers not best needed to study an entirely new kind of work; they had to study paintings in any respect: twelve years of total unemployment had bred general melancholy. To hope, at that point, to have 60 professional employees inside years appeared just a chunk of Utitz optimism; but now four hundred women and men paintings at the tannery, coming in via bus from a ten-mile radius around Killyleagh.
And out from Killyleagh goes suède to all of the primary makers of shoes on the Rome-Paris-London fashion axis. For suède is pervading all of the high style locations. This is in part because of the fashion for shoes to suit the clothes with which they’re worn; suède can be produced inside the most magnificent subtleties of shade. Again, it’s far in part because of the femininity of to-day’s models; suède, while it’s now made from child leather-based, is a soft, nearly sensual fabric; flexible, supple, lending itself to the most tricky designs for the maximum stylish footwear. And over again, the pervasion of suède is in some part because of the chrome-tanning manner at Killyleagh, which produces suède containing no resin and not using a plastic surface (the foot can, so to speak, breath); and which, in the new Uta-proof version, is water-repellent – after wearing in the wet it only has to be sponged or brushed with a totally soft brush.
Pastel, peach-bloom, and crimson mushroom suèdes made the most captivating footwear for this most uncharming summer season. Autumn colors are riper, richer: berry crimson, leaf browns, ripe plums, rich black. Shoes themselves have taken on a medieval turn. There is a touch of medieval Venice in the long, slim escarpin from the Dior-Delman series in Paris; of medieval England in the metropolis bootee, half-way between a shoe and a boot, designed by Charles Creed to go along with his autumn series.
It is a comparatively recent development for the London couturiers to collaborate with shoe producers. Michael, for his autumn collection, designed suède shoes, made by way of Norvic, with what he called a greyhound appearance – the ultimate word and cutting-edge line in tapering slenderness… Feet introduced to a fun factor, heels to a narrow spike. Mattli confirmed suède shoes he had designed for Saxone in a brand new bluish-beige Uta color; Hardy Amies, John Cavanagh, Norman Hartnell, and Digby Morton all designed footwear finished by Rayne, one of the new Associate Members of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers.
Mr. Edward Rayne said himself fascinated by the utterly fresh outlook given to shoe designing through those four dressmakers. The boots are actually inside the shops, and the clients will want to be fascinated too, for they price twelve guineas a pair. They are referred to as the Rayne Couture C0llection, and are being produced in what’s known as a “restrained edition.” But for those who themselves have constrained shopping power, the Miss Rayne Collection at five guineas will commend itself maximum warmly.
Miss Rayne, a legendary charmer, is not a concern to unreasonable flights of foolishness. Her footwear is pretty and youthful, yet contrive to be practical in addition to seductive. There are low-cut, straight-vamped pumps in a bright colored glacé youngster, with toddler Louis heels; and there is the town on foot footwear of gentle cork-grained leather-based, with a brogue tongue wrappings over the vamp. And there may be a specifically alluring model of the classic black suède courtroom shoe – or pump, as it’s far now known as. We hear a super deal approximately “the little black dress” as a crucial of each fashionable woman’s cloth cabinet; but it is the pair of well-bred, slender-heeled black pumps which ensures that the inspiration of a well-dressed look is properly and laid.
