Sole Mates in the City

Keiko, here in front of the Brooklyn Shoe Space’s wall of lasts, grew up in a suburb of Tokyo, in a family and a culture where making was commonplace. She remembers doing a lot of different crafts—at home, in school, and at Girl Scouts—including knitting, sewing, woodworking, and origami.

On a fall day back in 2003, Keiko Hirosue mentioned to her boyfriend that when she retired, she wanted to learn how to make her own shoes. She was twenty-three at the time, living in Brooklyn, working as a program assistant for an artist residency organization, and preparing to apply to law school. He wondered why she thought she needed to wait forty years. Why not start now?

The question inspired Keiko to rethink her timetable, and soon after, she enrolled in an evening class at the midtown YWCA taught by Emily Putterman, an experienced shoe designer and maker and the only local teacher outside of the formal degree programs in the city’s fashion schools. From the start, Keiko knew she had tapped into a passion and, possibly, a new career path. Her first pair of shoes—made over the course of ten three-hour sessions—were metallic orange sandals with fiery feathers up the back. Then came navy blue knee-high boots with a side zipper, followed by black pointy-toed pumps with an ankle strap. “When I made my first design, and they fit my feet, it felt great,” Keiko explains while sitting on a stool at a large worktable at the Brooklyn Shoe Space (BKSS), a communal studio and learning center that she now owns in Williamsburg. “Right away, people started asking me where I got my shoes. I realized that I could do something with this.”

The entrance to BKSS on Roebling Street.

Over the next few years, “something” evolved into more classes and lots of practice at home—plus a few jobs in the fashion industry, getting married to that astute boyfriend, and giving birth to a baby boy—and, ultimately, designing a line of shoes manufactured in China, a process she found unsatisfying. “I realized that making shoes was my passion, not sending a design overseas,” she recalls. She rented a 500-square-foot studio on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and bought some secondhand equipment so she could make shoes better and more efficiently herself. When other shoe and leather accessories makers began asking her if she would share her setup, she knew it made sense: She needed a way to offset her expenses and liked the idea of building a community, a place where makers could network and support one another. Keiko had emigrated to New York from Japan after college, and she still felt like an outsider. “When I started this, I didn’t have a core network of friends. It’s been nice to build that,” she says.

What Keiko began gradually grew, and in 2015—at a new, larger location on Roebling Street—she formalized the business/collective under the name Brooklyn Shoe Space. Member Jessi Katz, founder of the Larry shoe brand, recalls meeting Keiko in the early days: “I remember her saying that she wanted to start a shoemaker collective,” Jessi explains. “And then she did it—and incredibly well—because she’s wonderful at seeing how people can help each other, and she’s very generous with her time.” Like Keiko, Jessi began studying shoemaking with Emily Putterman, then went on to earn a master’s in footwear design from the Polimoda fashion school in Florence, Italy, and a pedorthics (orthopedic foot care) certificate from St. Petersburg College in Florida. After finishing the degree in Florence, she moved back to New York and became a BKSS member. “The space is amazing because we shoemakers can share big equipment that nobody has room for at home,” Jessi says. “Keiko always keeps materials on hand, and everybody is open and happy to help when you’re having difficulty with something.”

Member Lorna Nixon agrees. Lorna earned a degree in fashion accessories design from the London College of Fashion in 2010 and immediately flew to Manhattan to take a position as a handbag designer for a fashion conglomerate. Over the next few years, she became disillusioned by corporate culture, which she found lacked artistry and innovation and operated with questionable ethics when dealing with labor forces overseas. Rather than making use of what she saw as her greatest assets— “I have these hands. I have these skills,” she says—she was spending most of her time on a computer designing trend-driven bags, then preparing instructions for factory workers in Asia to follow. By 2016, she felt unfulfilled and frustrated that she was not utilizing the skills that had brought her to New York in the first place. A colleague who knew she was a maker at heart introduced her to BKSS and, she recalls, “The instant I walked in, I felt at home.”

Sewing machines suitable for leatherwork are set up at the back of BKSS while communal worktables are situated at the front of the first floor and in the basement.

Soon Lorna began to spend nearly every hour she wasn’t working or sleeping at the space making bags. “I’d be late to my job during the week, but on Saturday and Sunday I would be at BKSS by seven a.m.” Within five months, she had gathered the courage to break out on her own—though she was not really on her own, thanks to her new family of BKSS friends. “Everyone at BKSS has each other’s backs,” she says. “We’re constantly learning from one another.”

Now Lorna designs, produces, and sells a line of leather bags as well as one-of-a-kind pieces directly to consumers and runs a company called I Made That Bag, which hosts bag-making parties and sells DIY bag-making kits. “Teaching at BKSS and seeing people who have never touched a sewing machine or cut leather, which is a skill in and of itself, make something for the first time and feel proud that they used their own hands gave me the idea for the company,” she explains.

Lorna’s story is a familiar one at BKSS. Member Ritika Bhattacharya also left a career in corporate fashion to do her own thing here. In Ritika’s case, the decision followed an apprenticeship with a master shoemaker in Budapest and coincided with having a baby. “I was hesitant about returning to the corporate fashion world, which meant long, unpredictable hours but, of course, a great salary and benefits,” she explains. “The other option was to forgo that safety net and try to forge my own path and stay closer to my son.” Ritika was one of the first to join the original studio on Bedford Avenue, and she thinks back fondly to those early days when she and Keiko were both figuring out how to juggle marriage, motherhood, and their new business ventures. Ritika makes custom shoes, mostly for children, and is developing a line free of toxic chemicals and adhesives.

BKSS member Ritika Bhattacharya made these child’s chukka boots with nontoxic distressed leather (for the upper) and recycled rubber (for the soles).

Over the years, Brooklyn Shoe Space has expanded from its quiet beginnings as a shared workroom to become an educational center and meeting place for the devoted and the curious alike. Here, the general public can learn what goes into making a pair of shoes and why buying them directly from a local, independent maker—if they don’t want to make them themselves—is a good choice. BKSS is also a hub for all levels of leather workers, from absolute beginners to experienced cordwainers, to develop skills and support one another. “It’s wonderful to meet shoemakers who come to visit us from all over the world,” Ritika comments. They come from as far away as Indonesia and New Zealand to take courses that range from a six-hour espadrille session to a six-day shoe-, boot-, or sneaker-making intensive to a monthlong deep-dive into hand-welting, the traditional (now rare) practice of hand-stitching, rather than cementing, the upper to the sole of the shoe.

Emily Boksenbaum has been an instructor here for nearly as long as she has been a member. She signed up for the beginner shoemaking intensive a month after she moved to New York from Chicago, and Keiko promptly asked her to teach tooling (which she had learned after graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, while working with a tooling specialist on furniture and wall panels). Teaching helped Emily finance her membership, and her fellow makers helped her develop her skills and acclimate to life in New York. “It was automatic community. They just invited me into their world,” she says. Members also encouraged her when a renowned footwear company, after seeing shoes she created at BKSS on Instagram, offered her a job in their innovation lab in New England. She’s giving it a try, putting her BKSS membership on pause only because she is not currently living in the city. “I miss my friends there so much. BKSS reminds you of the part of shoemaking you love most—the feeling of the materials in your hands,” she says.

Ritika designs and makes eco-friendly kids’ shoes under the brand name Brooklyn Bebe Company. One day, she hopes to find a way to collaborate directly with artisans in India to make textiles that can be incorporated into her shoes and accessories. “I would love to be part of the preservation and continuation of my cultural heritage,” she explains.

“It’s wonderful to meet shoemakers who come to visit us from all over the world.”

—Ritika Bhattacharya

Behind the scenes, Keiko is cheering on Emily and everyone else in her BKSS orbit and, simultaneously, pursuing her own evolving dreams. Recognizing that a lack of infrastructure for small-scale shoe manufacturing is a major stumbling block for independent designers who want to have shoes made in the United States, in 2017, she and BKSS member Rebecca Heykes founded the Brooklyn Shoe Factory (originally in Williamsburg and now in nearby Hoboken, New Jersey) to fill that niche. A year later, the Factory launched its own line of shoes, Loyal Footwear, designed by Rebecca and made on-site. One day, Keiko hopes, they will have a showroom where they can display and sell Loyal Footwear as well as other members’ brands. She also dreams of satellite locations of the Brooklyn Shoe Space, where she and her team can share the excitement of shoemaking and the pleasure of wearing fashionable shoes that fit properly with even more people. For now, Keiko teaches classes in other cities a few times a year and also travels to take classes herself.

“What we are doing is gratifying in so many ways,” Keiko explains. “We are a catalyst and gateway for educating people. We are supporting artists and the local economy. And we are helping people reconnect with the natural human instinct to make with their own hands.”

Although Keiko admits that balancing the finances can be stressful, and that she is still putting most of what she earns back into the business, she is excited about the life she is making for herself and the opportunities she is facilitating for others. “The more time you spend at BKSS, the more you get out of it,” she says. “The more you contribute to the community, the more the community supports you in return.”

Handmade shoes modeled by makers (from left to right) Bonnie Andrus, Emily Boksenbaum, and Keiko. “Shoes are so essential,” says Keiko. “They have to be comfortable or they can ruin your whole day and affect your health.” The fashion footwear industry’s primary focus is on business, she explains. “They don’t care about feet.”

“BKSS reminds you of the part of shoemaking you love most—the feeling of the materials in your hands.”

—Emily Boksenbaum

Assorted projects on a BKSS worktable, including Emily’s mermaid boots. She tooled the leather with mermaids on the front and “Live, Create, Make Waves” on the back to celebrate her new skill after completing an apprenticeship with a bootmaker in Albuquerque.

Keiko sources leather from distributors and manufacturers in New York’s Fashion District and from shoe companies that donate their leftovers. This means that students who take classes at BKSS have an abundance of options from which to choose.

In the basement work area, Emily sands the outsole edges of a black oxford for a client. “Making shoes with seasoned shoemakers around me—doing it wrong and getting help from the person sitting next to me—is what has taught me the most,” she says.

For teaching purposes, Keiko keeps tester shoes like this one on hand. Here she is lasting and nailing the leopard-print leather upper to the midsole. When the last around which she is working is removed, the upper will hold its shape.

“Everyone at BKSS has each other’s backs. We’re constantly learning from one another.”

—Lorna Nixon

The shoes Keiko is wearing here are prototypes for a commercial client. The apron is a BKSS original.

Much of one long wall at the Brooklyn Shoe Space is lined with lasts, the molds around which the upper portion of a shoe is constructed. The style and size of a last (its length, width, and toe shape, and the height of the arch and instep) determine the type of shoe that can be made from it, thus the shoemakers’ expression “Lasts come first.”

Lorna Dixon assembling her I Made That Bag kits at BKSS. “I feel so lucky to walk into work happy now. Keiko is like a fairy godmother sprinkling happiness on everyone. She selflessly supports projects to help each of us succeed.”