Art shoes are unwearable, fantasy shoes constructed of unique materials in various shapes and silhouettes. The art shoes in the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Fantasy Shoes are made of from a vast array of materials such as feathers, paper, ceramic, metal, resin, playing cards, and corrugated cardboard--even fresh flowers and frosting--and their intricate construction and imagination is extroardinary.
This book features Jane Weitzman's selection of the best of this collection, approximately 150 shoes of the more 1,000 she has commissioned and discovered since the first retail shop opened in the mid-1990s.
There will be an introduction by Weitzman telling the story of the collection. The body of the book showcases shoes from the collection, along with brief, identifying captions, in an impeccably designed, graphically compelling, artful package that offers the deluxe details that make it a perfect gift:
a silkscreened and embossed cloth case
printing around the three open edges of the book
a satin ribbon marker
The back matter includes a thumbnail photograph of every shoe in the book, along with a more in-depth description as well as a brief biography on the artist on who created it.
THE STORY OF THE COLLECTION
The Stuart Weitzman Collection of Fine Art Shoes is curated and inspired by Jane Weitzman, founding vice president of retail for Stuart Weitzman. For more than ten years, her work for the company and for a number of charities required her to travel extensively. During her travels, she saw various artists' interpretations of shoes that were not designed to be worn as footwear. She began purchasing these shoes for the purpose of displaying them in the Stuart Weitzman retail store windows, and the collection took off, generating consumer and media attention. She then began to commission artists whose work indicated that they could create interesting and exciting shoes, too.
While some art shoes in the Stuart Weitzman collection were inspired by Stuart Weitzman's designs, and a few artists actually used these designs as a basis for their own work, few of them are simply decorated. Artists must have taken the shoes to the next level for their work to be considered for the collection.
Over time, the store windows became a gallery for both established and emerging talent, and many artists competed for a chance to show their art shoes. In some instances artists from other countries created these shoes after learning about the windows. Jane also initiated projects with inner city students who came up with their own concepts to be displayed, which was gratifying for everyone involved. Jane often collaborated with Timothy Fortuna, then director of visual design at Stuart Weitzman, to create the fantasy windows that incorporated the art shoes. The windows were changed once a month, and the collection traveled from city to city at a time when the company had only ten retail stores.
