Barbara Shaum
I must admit, I’m a little obsessed with Barbara Shaum. The timeless aesthetic and durable quality of her sandals get me every time. Her all-leather construction and cobbling technique (adding brass tacks around the edges of the sandals) makes them to last forever. She apprenticed with Raymond Duncan (Isadora Duncan’s brother). Also a dancer, he developed a philosophy of movement based on everyday life and work, focusing on the evolution of the worker/person as much as their product and earning potential. In the physical yet not easily profitable profession of sandal making, this is an ideology to live by.
Barbara Shaum moved to New York at 21 with one dollar to her name. She opened a custom sandal making shop in 1962 and continued to make sandals until her death at age 86, in 2015. She offered about 50 styles of sandals, but often she was the one who ultimately made the selection. “I can read people’s minds,” she says. In the early days, she made a point of pricing her sandals on a sliding scale, and often traded sandals for chores around her shop. Barbara was a generous teacher; some of her apprentices are still making sandals today, including Jutta Neumann, a.b.k., and Kika. Barbara was an activist who fought for equal pay for women and affordable rent for small businesses. “In the 60s, when there were a lot of protests around here, a cop said to me, ‘When I see someone wearing sandals, I know they’re the enemy,’” she recalls. “Now it’s a totally different thing—everyone is wearing them.”
