Fashion Wire Daily January 26, 2005 - NEW YORK - SHOE DESIGNER'S NEW LINE A PERFECT FIT
"I don't make shoes for me," designer Eileen Shields states flatly. "I mean, I don't buy one of every pair when the collection comes back from the factory. But the great thing about being a woman shoe designer is that you get to try every pair on. That's why I'm such a stickler about fit. I can't tell you," she continues, "the fights I've had with my factories about wearability. It's always some Italian guy whose family has been manufacturing shoes for generation, telling me 'but this is how we always do it.' And my response is: Put it on. Right now. Put it on."
Shields points at the boot she's wearing, an over-the-knee job in purple suede with nearly three-inch heels, and laughs.
"Can you even imagine? I've never once had a man take me up on the offer to try a shoe in himself. Now, thank goodness, I've found a factory run by a woman, so she knows what I'm talking about when I complain about stiletto heels that force you onto the ball of the foot, or toes that scrunch. I love beautiful shoes as much - or more - than anyone," Shields goes on, "I just don't believe we ought to suffer for it. Me, I'm generally a big believer in flats. Today is an exception to the rule."
Any woman who finds herself nodding her head in happy agreement at the mention of flats ought to go take a look at Shields's shoes, STAT. Though the designer's line, now entering its third season, is rich in pumps, the standout item is the 'Juliette,' a round-toed flat with contrasting t-strap; available in a few different colors, they're the kind of shoes committed pedestrians love to the point of destruction. And even Shields's princess heels, such as the sling-backed 'Ameli' and 'Maria' mary jane, offer merely the suggestion of the soigne high-heeled silhouette, while hewing forgivingly low to the ground.
"It's not like I launched the line because I couldn't find any flats out there I liked," Shields notes, "but if it's a niche that works for me, I guess I'm glad to fill it." She laughs again, adding merrily: "I don't know. This is only my third collection; I'm still figuring out what 'Eileen Shields' the brand is all about. I have some ideas, but It's going to take a few more seasons before I can say for sure. For now, I'm just a cobbler, really."
Shields's pleas of naivete aside, the designer is no neophyte when it comes to shoes. Though the Ireland native started out designing clothes, it wasn't long into her training before she turned her attention to footwear. After moving to the U.S., and doing a short stint in the sketch rooms of Anne Klein, Shields was lured to DKNY, where she helped to launch the label's shoe line and ultimately found herself in charge of design.
"I really loved working at DKNY," Shields says. "Donna really inspires great loyalty, because you're made to feel like it's your brand, like you're working for yourself. But even so, I couldn't ever quite forget that my responsibility was to the brand, to making something that reflected DKNY and would sell to a mass market. I was aching more and more to do something that was really mine."
When Shields finally jumped ship in 2002, she explains, she had more than a few catalysts.
"I think a lot of people had that experience with September 11th, of feeling like, 'no more waiting, the time is now'," she says. "And then, also, I got married, and took a three-month sabbatical for my honeymoon. I sort of knew I wasn't going back to DKNY, I'd actually given my leave and they told me to take the sabbatical and think about it, but then I got pregnant and that fixed it."
As well as incubating ideas for her own line, which she launched for Fall 2004, Shields had another project cooking, as well.
"I was opening a shop in Dublin," she recalls, "and that process wound up being much more consuming than I'd anticipated. Maybe in the back of my mind, I thought, great, if I have this shop, then I'l definitely have a place to sell my shoes, but mostly I was thinking as a buyer and a retailer. Which wound up being the best thing when I finally did get started on the shoes, because now I get to bounce off the designers in the store the way I bounced off the designers at Donna Karan. It's not like I'm making shoes to match what's in the shop, but I am a person who needs...something. A mood, a spirit, a silhouette."
"When I design shoes," she continues, "I don't start with the shoe. It's more like, seeing a silhouette in a kind of blurry way, and imagining the shoes that work with it. That's why there's not a ton of detail in my shoes. There's some, because I want them to feel special, but mostly I like shoes that are sort of unspecific. I'm more interested in shape and color than I am in all the embellishments."
Shields does note, however, that for her achieving simplicity is an exercise in perfectionism.
"You know how they say bands have a lifetime to make their first record, and six months to do the second?
That's how I felt when it came time to do the Spring '05 collection — I was crazed, nothing seemed right, I kept making little changes. And now, I'd given enough lectures to students, I knew that the single most important thing for a designer is to know her own mind; you have to be decisive. I felt like I was all over the place — that collection was honestly painful for me to produce; it took me by surprise when I saw the samples and realized that what I'd done was good. Now that I'm doing my third collection, I'm a lot more confident."
According to Shields, her next collection is "very different" from its predecessors.
"Apparently it's very different, anyway," she says. "That's what everyone else says, but I don't see it. I've gone in a slightly new direction in terms of color; that's where the new collection started for me, with a palette inspired by antique kimonos. And you know how geishas will have that one little spark of red on the lips - I've been doing a lot with using red that way, as this startling, bright contrast against a muted color. Metals, too - really bright metal details. I'm excited about it. I just hope," she adds, "that everything really fits."
