In 1938, at Munich time, there had 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 those 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, in 1795, exports from Prague had stopped, and this became 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 only one skilled tanner took with them. The little department in the converted flax mill became Uta suède’s principal tannery. The villagers not only needed to study an entirely new kind of work; they also had to learn paintings in any respect: twelve years of total unemployment had bred general melancholy. To hope, at that point, to have 60 professional employees within years appeared just a chunk of Utitz optimism, 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, it permeates all of the high-style locations. This is partly because of the fashion for shoes to suit their clothes; suède can be produced inside the most magnificent subtleties of shade. Again, it’s far in part because of the femininity of today’s models; suède, 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 soft brush.
Pastel, peach-bloom, and crimson mushroom suèdes made the most captivating footwear for this uncharming summer season. Autumn colors are riper and 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, halfway between a shoe and a boot, designed by Charles Creed to accompany 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 of shoe designing through those four dressmakers. The boots are 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 Collection 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.
A legendary charmer, Miss Rayne is not concerned with unreasonable flights of foolishness. Her footwear is pretty and youthful yet contrive to be practical and seductive. There are low-cut, straight-vamped pumps in a brightly colored glacé youngster, with toddler Louis heels, and there is the town-on-foot footweatown-on-footcork-grained leather-based, with 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 now known. We hear a deal about “the little black dress” as a crucial of each fashionable woman’s cloth cabinet, but the pair of well-bred, slender-heeled black pumps ensure that the inspiration of a well-dressed look is properly laid.
