The art of heel making

Photo taken by Nalini Arora in Alicante, Spain

This summer I headed to London for a trade show and then headed to Alicante, Spain to review development.

It’s always nice to visit the factories, check on new development, see new materials, visit suppliers, and check out any new constructions the factory may have for future development.

One of the projects I was working on had a new heel development. We had a hard time finding an existing heel with the exact height we wanted so we developed our own.

The direction of the design was to have an everyday heel. When I saw the heel, I thought it was a little too frumpy looking. To be safe, I wanted my client to see two options one that felt a little frumpy and the other having a little more thinness.

We first discussed where we wanted to shave it down, and add. I say that heel making is an art because we are looking at the heel, and creating a balance that we feel goes with the design we are creating. It’s taking out a little here, and adding a little there. Sometimes you make a mistake, and then you have to correct it. In our case, that did happen to us, and so we had to add more to the heel, and do a little more shaving down.

As you can see here, we added a little clay to the heel in areas where we thought we thinned it out too much. This will allow us to go back and correct once the clay is dry ( it’s very quick), and start the sculpting process again.

Here is where we begin to shave the clay from the heel. The machine allows the heel maker to create the shapes, and proportions we want.

The heel maker also uses sand paper to capture corners that are harder to get in a machine.

Here is a peek of the the different tools the heel maker uses for the heel design.

These are plates used in replacement of the heel tap. The heel tap is not attached at this point. The plates assist with getting a feel for the height.

Giving my client options is important. Ideas evolve when there is a collaboration between designer and brand. Below I provided my client with their option which as an everyday feel and one that I thought would be a little more feminine.