Marilyn Monroe once said, “Give the girl
the right shoes, and she can conquer the world”. Every time I marvel over
Martha Davis’s shoes, that quote comes instinctively to mind. Each pair is smartly
designed, well crafted, comfortable and very sexy.
Trained as a product designer at Smart Design,
Razorfish, and her own company Able Design before segueing into the fashion
world in the fall of 2009, she leverages her industrial design expertise by fusing
hard-core functionality with unique sculptural possibilities to create some
very impressive shoes.
“I think of shoes as little products or
architecture for the feet—both share similar purpose of protection,
organization, and personality,” says the designer. An expert at looking for
solutions within a problem, she never loses sight of ways to keep the foot
secure and the wearer confident, while at the same time innovating with form
and experimenting with structure and materials.
“I look at where the foot needs to be supported
and where it doesn’t—then how the materials and shapes can be arranged in an
interesting way. I like a bit of tension—something unexpected—whether it’s in
the proportions, compositions, or materials,” Davis says.
This past winter, Martha was a resident at the
newly formed The Workshop Residence in San Francisco. This exciting collective
engages makers of all kinds: emerging and established, traditional and
unexpected, and invites them to collaborate with the Bay Area’s vibrant artistic
and craft communities. During her residency there, she blended industry and
craftsmanship to design three distinctive shoes. While all of the shoes use the
same vegetable-tanned leather and have similarities in the shape and
construction of the shoe, the key point of innovation is the design of the
heel.
“Kasha” features a heel with colored resin and utilizes the outer
part of a redwood tree trunk known as the “jacket”. This part of the tree is
considered waste product by sawmills, but Martha envisioned this beautiful and
striking substance as a way to give the shoes a truly bespoke feeling.
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| Kasha |
For “Simone”, raw materials are carefully selected from the
undulating folds of Black Acacia wood harvested in the San Francisco Bay.
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| Simone |
Finally, “Sugi” has an adjustable heel made with repurposed Douglas
Fir. Additionally she constructs the shoe with wood originally used as brakes
for San Francisco’s iconic cable cars. Due to the wear and tear, the brakes on
the cable cars are replaced every 72 hours. Martha resurfaced the brakes and
cut the heels directly from them—the stunning result is a stylish oval that
swivels on a pin to two heel heights.
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| Sugi |
Martha is joining forces with creative director
Susanna Dulkinys to create Dulkinys Davis, a new fashion label made in the USA.
The collection will consist of basics centered around leather, blending
traditional and innovation to create modern shapes and exceptionally
high-quality, handmade products. More on their collaboration in a future post.
With out further ado, here’s my Q&A with
the alluring and magical Martha Davis.
Job description: a forever student—i hope!
Why do you do what you do? i am a terminal non-linear thinker
How do you break through a creative block? look at stuff
Education: cornell art/arch/planning school: 82-84
risd: bfa sculpture 86
are sutoria: footwear engineering certificate
07
Mentors: my dad & tucker viemeister
World-saving mission: help people appreciate making things and live
more self sufficiently
Office chair: Eames
Office Soundtrack: Italian opera
Most useful tool: apple air book/ husquvarna sewing machine i got
as a gift when i was 17
Favorite space: the giardiniin venice
Favorite design object: paperclip
Guilty Pleasure: naps
Underrated: plumbing
Overrated: facebook
What did you learn the hard way? to love
If you could cross over into other profession…
what would you do? be an architect or a surgeon
Dream project: to start a factory that could employ all kinds
of people and give local vitality
Where’s home? san francisco
Fall 2011
