My mother used to force us to walk barefoot, it was almost a daily family ritual. “Just walk a few minutes, walk feeling the contact with the ground” she would say.
And this is how we four siblings started to experiment these sensations through our feet: the feel of the wooden floors at home, the rocks in the wilderness, upon the sand on the beach or on a dirt road…it was not always something pleasant but it fixed the intensity of the moment. I loved it. I would concentrate on my steps, each one an accomplishment, each one a move forward towards something almost mysterious. My childhood eyes would see magic in that exercise, it had the capacity to transform my way of walking and at the same time permit me to move with total freedom. I believe that was the moment when my passion for dancing was born. I love to dance.

From those earliest years in my life I also remember those melancholic Sunday afternoons in which soccer was the end all and it was best to talk of nothing else.
Just like in other large families the children passed each other on clothes and shoes. I was the lucky one, being the oldest I always got brand new shoes. Footwear that were robust and able to withstand one school year after another. I remember them very well: brown, masculine and above all resilient. In the shoe box the manufacturer always included a green ball as a gift, but in spite of this I always hated them. I longed for a pair of patent leather shoes, I envisioned them with silver buckles and a small wooden heel. This is why the Woolworth’s store front turned into my promised land of shoes. Their high heeled footwear overflowing with femininity and their seductive allure was everything to me. I always sensed that being raised on those heels would change my perspective on the world. As if this small physical elevation would be mentally multiplied, providing me a wider vision, almost ethereal.

So as I reached adulthood, I always carried with me various pairs of shoes. This habit quickly became the norm. Artlessly I would change my shoes given my frame of mind. High heels when I felt powerful, with flats I would connect with the earth, they gave me a sense of stability; boots provided agility and joy…. This agreeable obsession caught the attention of Sybilla, a designer who shortly afterward asked me to work with her on the shoe collections. Thus, I came in direct contact with design, elaboration and production of shoes and I understood that this was much more complex than it appeared.

Leonardo da Vinci spoke about the feet as “a masterful work of art and engineering”. There are 26 articulating bones which make up a ¼ part of that which are found in the human body. In this reduced space is a framework made up of muscles, nerves and tendons. It is not possible to avoid its structural and anatomical importance. So, I began my studies to become a footwear technician; there was a lot to learn. Even now, despite all my experience I am certain that until the end of my days I will always be acquiring knowledge.

After several years working with Sybilla, my love for footwear knew no limits.
I decided to go to London to study and delve into what truly interested me. For my thesis research I investigated the needs and habits of those around me. Also, their insights in how they selected a shoe. Several “confessions” emerged from the interviews I conducted. A large group of men were attracted to high heels for reasons we are all aware of. In regards to the female interviews there was one answer I ignored that suddenly caught my attention: “on heels women cannot escape”. This became a point of reflection. A complete revelation around which I would construct a large part of my work in the future. I proposed to technically delve into comfort, levity and the beauty of a feminine touch, a pair of shoes with which to feel free.

There was a time when I was a biology student, good at science; apparently finding myself far away from design. Nevertheless, it was precisely in the university where I discovered that my mind was scientific, disciplined yet my soul leaned towards a creative universe. At the time this seemed a terrible internal variance of sorts, but now I have the certainty this was an amazing stroke of luck, disposing of two very valuable tools. I remember finding in a magazine a photo of a pile of wooden feet, all organized and labelled; they were lasts. A part of me saw in this image an enormous library, somewhat anomalous yet a storage place for knowledge after all. I felt an unstoppable desire to know that place where the lasts seemed almost sculpted, with time and intensive dedication amassed in stacks. Until then my relationship with design had been purely on an aesthetic level.

A few years later, after my studies in London, I found that knowledge. It was at the atelier and store of Sir John Lobb, official shoemaker to the Queen of England. It was like a cabinet of curiosities and with more than an extraordinary organization. There you could find the wooden lasts of celebrities such as Lady Di, Duke Ellington, the Shah of Persia or Jackie Kennedy and of course Her Majesty herself. The wooden lasts were a register of their lives, silently guarding a personal history. They all had them because each pair of shoes were made for a specific purpose. In the atelier work was done with hands and hearts in unison, applying all the knowledge that only many years of experience gives. Each pair of footwear that was ordered becomes a unique project of its own.

This is the place where I found what I was searching for; the very roots of footwear, a labour done by hand, and a centennial tradition applied rigorously. The one machine I saw all those years working there was a ratty adding machine, everything else was totally artisanal. Using traditional techniques, the work was meticulously measured by the millimetre. I first worked as a cutter, a clicker; a job practically non-existent, unheard of even by the English social security, the office clerk did not know how to register me. And it was in that amazing place I became a shoemaker.