Resumo de Designs On Your Feet

Customised shoes: Pinto pulls out all the stops with his shoes.
THERE was a buzz in the J.J. Bhabha Opera Hall's show area earmarked for the 30-odd designers who had converged at Mumbai to participate in the Lakme Fashion Week. In the embarrassment of clothing displayed by India's leading couturiers, the stall run by Goa-based Edwin Pinto stood out ? the racks displayed only customised shoes.
To say that the lean, bespectacled Pinto pulls out all the stops with his shoes is putting it mildly. His handmade footwear is singular and inspired by Nature. At his workshop in a village not far from Goa's capital city of Panaji, four artisans (aged between 60 and 80) cut and sew footwear embellished with floral motifs in such jewel tones as turquoise, emerald green, royal blue and fuchsia pink. Sequins and embroidery have long been a signature theme. Pinto embellishes silk with seashells, coconut-shells, sequins, tree-bark, and bamboo. Various designs
At the Fashion Week, the shoes are in shades of brown, black, cream, green and red in silk or jute, gladiator-style and leaf or snake-design sandals. Most shoes are flat pumps, a few have wedge heels, and many have the ubiquitous tip-tilted pointy toes of fairy-tale. And they're competitively priced too ? with prices pegged from Rs.1,000 onwards. Some Mumbai mochis charge likewise for leather ankle or calf-length boots, sometimes more). Certain designers can set you back by outrageous five figures! Pinto's shoes can be bought from a few outlets in Goa, at his Porvorim workshop and at Ingo's Saturday Night Bazaar. The shoes aren't available in Mumbai. But you can place orders. He says he doesn't quite relish the prospect of his designs being lifted and that's the main reason "I haven't left Goa". We spot a male model sporting a pair from a shoe chain and Pinto is certain that the chain pinched his design. Cute `n' classy. Those are the operative words for Pinto's whimsical, geometric-shaped shoes. His father was a doctor in the Tanzanian government, "my mother comes from an old, `aristocratic' family"." Neither was amused when he decided to become a fashion couturier till five years ago when he decided to specialise in shoes, leaving the flourishing business in his wife Angela's capable hands. Initially his choice of profession evoked a patronising "dorzee zala" (he's become a tailor). Switching over to the cobbler's trade still attracts sniffs and head shaking. But the people who matter most to him have come to terms with his work. "Once my father saw that I was determined to do what I wanted to do, he said I should do my best. My mother took a longer time though to come round." Today, she is proud her son's shoes are exported to different parts of the world. His clientele consist mainly of Western tourists who buy the shoes from fashion designer Wendell Rodricks' store. "Wendell has been a great help," says Pinto, sliding easily from English to Konkani as he speaks to an assistant. For someone who had "no formal education till the age of 10 when we came back to Goa from Tanzania", his English is excellent. Pinto says he doesn't remember the African tongue at all, to which I respond that my cousins who lived for several years in Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam and Mombasa remain fluent in Swahili till today. He only smiles and tells me he studied for a B.A degree before taking up sewing classes. "I think what nurtured and honed my creativity was my unschooled childhood in Africa." His interest in tailoring deepened after high school back in 1976. A tailoring course in Mumbai, followed by a year's stint with a French fashion designer in Anjuna had him dreaming of charting his own course. Designer fabric shoes soon began to take shape. He bagged his first big order from Francisco Martins, who was shepherding a large Goan contingent to the Asiad's cultural extravaganza and ordered 600 pairs for the troupe.

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