THIS IS MY STORY
I´m Eugenia, I´m not telling my age, but I was born the year that the Halley´s Comet passed by, and Argentina won the 2nd Soccer World Cup :)
I´ve always lived in Buenos Aires, and like all the "porteños" who were born here, I´m very proud of that.
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Since I was a little girl, I was very creative and entrepreneur. My first project was at 6. I used to write a magazine printed by a dot matrix printer and sell it at school. I´ve always had projects and ideas floating in my mind.
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I went to a Business College from Buenos Aires and I got a Marketing Degree. I started to work in market research, in the analyst team at The Nielsen Company. It was a very interesting job, but I wasn´t happy at all. Something very important for me was missing. And I founded it in fashion photography.
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I decided to become a Fashion Stylist and I started to make editorials for some newspapers and magazines from here, working on runways and helping to make some brands campaigns. But I really wanted to start creating fashion, that was when I decided to become a shoe designer.
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Shoes. Making shoes is a huge world and I had no idea it was that difficult. If I wanted to be a shoe designer, I first had to know how to make shoes, and while I was knowing more and more about all the process, I fell in love with shoemaking.
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Most shoemakers were born in a shoemakers family, but I didn´t. My family is a middle social class one, who are sure that studying a lot is the only way to survive in Argentina. My mum is Biochemist and my dad is an Electronic Engineer, so I was raised in a left brain sided family.
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I made a postgrade in Shoe Design and and I also became a Technician of Footwear Patterns and Shoe Construction. Here in my country we have a lot of Italian heritage culture, so I learnt Italian Patterns and methods. I´m very thankful for my patterns teacher Rafael Hidalgo, who was taught by Gianni Lalicatta, an Italian shoemaker who came here after the 2nd WW.
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Now I´m proud to tell that I have my own workshop, my own machines, my own lasts collection (I have more that 600 pairs) and my own tools. And I am proud because for me, It wasn´t easy at all to get.
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For more than ten years I´ve worked making shoes, sneakers, boots, high heels, custom shoes and the shoe lines for local clothing brands in my workshop. I´ve also made designs and patterns for big factories and I was a shoemaking teacher for a while, too.
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Just a few months before quarantine, I was feeling frustrated because of the economic crisis in Argentina. Lots of shoemaking workshops and factories were closing and I felt a lot of uncertainty.
That was when I met Drew. He is from California and he was visiting friends in Buenos Aires. He lives in a farm close to Sacramento and he opened my mind and heart. He wears work boots everyday and I felt a strong desire to make a pair of work boots for him. That was when this project started.
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Where I live is not very common to wear work boots, but I wanted to inmerse in all this world. It took me a while.
I read books, watched videos, talked with lots of people. I started to create different samples, with different materials and different types of construction.
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I met so wonderful people who wanted to help me and who made me feel I wasn´t alone in this journey. I am having so many new friends from all over the globe, I really love that.
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Work boots for me are not just work boots.
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My son Baltasar wants to have his custom leather boots to make a cool patina. I guess I´m doing a good job as a mum ;)
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What I love most about boot making is the significance of transformation, the magic beyond having a raw material and shaping it into an object that you can wear everyday. But workboots are not just that.
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When a person puts on his pair of work boots and wears them multiple times, they begin to take on a life of their own. The wearer becomes the final ingredient to the shoemaking process, infusing the boots with unique personality and character.
Each pair of work boots has its own and different story, making them truly one-of-a-kind. There will never be two same pairs. That concept really excites me.
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Thank you for reading,
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Eugenia
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