fashion

A London Trained Shoemaker in CT

‘I have always loved shoes,” said Lauren Brinkers at her pop-sale and display at Standard Space in Sharon, Conn., this fall. That love could not be more visually evident. In her studio in Cornwall, Conn., Brinkers creates velvet-soft boots from vegetable-tanned leather that she hand-paints with eco-friendly dye. “Before I knew I could learn to make shoes, I was in Indiana in college, studying to become a nurse. Still, I was going to Goodwill and vintage stores and buying cheap leather boots, cutting them and breaking my sewing machine, not knowing what I was doing. But I was obsessed with reimagining shoes.”

Her journey began in the United Kingdom while attending the Cordwainers shoemaking school in London. “I got this diverse and rich experience from school while also volunteering at factories in Hackney, filled with these very refined, polite, wonderful people who took tea every morning at 11 and then again at 2:30.”

Whimsically decorated and crafted with care, Brinkers’ shoes take inspiration less from the runway than from art books and oil paintings. “I create my leather dyes. It’s this whole romantic process for me. But the silhouette is like a pre-Raphaelite, old-world boot. It’s like a slipper but resembles a shoe you would see in a painting.”

To shop Lauren Brinkers shoes online go to www.laurenbrinkers.com

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Lauren Brinkers and her painted leather shoes on display at a pop-sale in Sharon, Conn., this fall. Photo by Alexander Wilburn
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