Part III: Jesse Thorn interviews Raul Ojeda of Don Ville, custom shoemaker in Los Angeles

[shoreman1782]

Editor's note: Jesse Thorn is the founder and host of the long-running, recently retired pop culture interview series The Sound of Young America and cohost of comedy podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go!, and he recently launched a new show, Bullseye. He also produces Put This On, a video series and blog about dressing like a grownup that will soon begin its second season. Jesse has been a Styleforum member for a few years, and together with Put This On cowriter Derek Guy, he'll be contributing to Styleforum on an occasional basis, i.e., in the exceedingly rare moments when he's not in front of a mic or camera.

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[I]Jesse Thorn (left) and Raul Ojeda (right). Photo by Gordon De Los Santos.[/I]

[SIZE=4][B]Raul Ojeda is the founder of Don Ville Shoes in Los Angeles, the country’s only storefront offering custom and bespoke shoes made on-premises. He started his journey more than ten years ago as a shoe shiner ([URL=http://www.styleforum.net/t/281403/jesse-thorn-interviews-raul-ojeda-of-don-ville-custom-shoemaker-in-los-angeles/0_50]part I of this interview[/URL]). Today, he leads a team of master craftsmen ([URL=http://www.styleforum.net/t/283836/part-ii-jesse-thorn-interviews-raul-ojeda-of-don-ville-custom-shoemaker-in-los-angeles/0_50]part II of this interview[/URL]). In part III of our conversation with Raul, I talked not just about the “how” of making shoes, but about the “why.”
[/B]

JT: It seems to me from talking to you off microphone about what you’re trying to do, that with Don Ville specifically, you’re trying to, not just to replicate the service Willie offered in his heyday, a “basic custom shoe operation,” you’re really aspiring to create something in Los Angeles, in the United States, that incorporates not just that history, but also a huge amount of the sort of classic European and international tradition as well.

RO: I think that there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have that here. The selection that we offer today is greater than that that a lot of other shoe makers offer, and the plans that we have to grow our business, and to grow our collection of things that we offer is just unheard of.

Just going away from men’s dress shoes right now, we’ve been trying to get into women’s shoes. One of the things first things we’re doing is recreating vintage stuff from the 40s and 50s, and we have the hardest time finding the proper heels. Of course those heels aren't anywhere to be found. Whoever was manufacturing those heels are no longer in business so now we’re told we have to go to Europe or China to get those heels made and bring them back here.

Instead of following that advice, we partnered up with an engineer to design our heels on a digital program, like an architectural program, in a three dimensional form, that will be able to tailor each one of the heels to each individual last with which a client will end up choosing to have their shoes made. I think that being a little more proactive will allow us to become better known and more recognizable; trying not to go outside of the country to get our products made. And I think that’s good for the shoes, the goal that we have is to offer something that so many people would like to have.

How many people do you know, Jesse, that would like to go to Europe, take a trip down King’s Road in London, order three or four pair of shoes, get some shirts made, some suits--but unfortunately we don’t have that kind of capital in our bank accounts to do it. Even just traveling outside of the city so many times; how many people would get on a plane to go to San Francisco because there is a better steakhouse or clam chowder restaurant. Not many people. So we just want to offer all those beautiful things here in Los Angeles.

[URL=http://www.styleforum.net/image/id/1192482/width/350/height/350][IMG]http://www.styleforum.net/image/id/1192482/
Photo by Gordon De Los Santos.

JT: You told me the history of Willie’s. You know, in the 1950s, there was still an expectation that if you wanted good clothes, you would have them made for you. The whole idea of off the rack clothing was still not that old in the 50s. I think that especially in the late 1960s and the 1970s, that expectation disappeared.

What I wonder is, if you think that in 2011 as we have this conversation, we’re in a different time. A new time where there is some expectation that that is something that might be available to you. Where you can start a custom business and have the expectation that your customers might include not just people who are so rich they are looking for ways to spend their money but also people who want something that is special and made for them?

RO: Absolutely--special and made for them, and I think that one other asset to the process would be to know that you know the guy who made this for you. To walk into the place, order the thing you want, and have a relationship with that person. You might run into him or her at the movie theater. It’s made by your neighbors. I think that’s one of the greater things we have going on here.

And it’s not necessarily just a problem with clothes. Our cellphones, the cellphones that a lot us use, especially with these new iPhones and Androids, there's new things coming up if not every 6 months then every year. In the last 10 years we’ve decided that the cellphone expense is a necessity. We need to have it. So if you really think about how much money we spend on cellphones, it’s a lot of money. Money that we don’t consider spending on our clothes or our shoes.

Going to eat at a really nice restaurant, a nice dinner on a date, probably $100? Maybe a fancier dinner would be like $300? But we don’t do that all the time; if we were to add that kind of money to what we spend on other little things. If I were to spend this kind of money on my clothes or my shoes, then I’m actually being smart about the money that I’m spending because this shoe is better made, it’s well crafted, and if I care for my shoe properly then I will have it for a long time. And I think that’s the biggest challenge for most.

Working at the shoe repair shop for so many years, so often I would give someone a quote to repair their shoes and the instant reaction I got was “Oh my god, that’s more than what I paid for my shoes. I better just go buy another one.” By spending more money on higher quality footwear, you’re almost forcing yourself to continue to shop for shoes. You probably only buy a pair every 6 months or every year. You’re not going to the mall to see what the newest coolest sneaker you can get, what everyone else is wearing. That’s the thing we have to overcome.

JT: I think we all have these houses that are full of crap. In the United States, even if you’re lower-middle income, you probably still have too much stuff, and it’s a matter of turning “too much stuff” into “the right stuff.”

RO: Right. Then again, it’s like in high school that poor kid--all his friends are wearing the cool sneakers and the guy only wears his old chucks. Everybody has their Air Jordans. I think that applies to all of us in general. Yes we have too much. I counted my tshirts today, and I have about 45 tshirts. I only wear 5, the same cool tshirts all the time. And I’m just going to get rid of all those shirts. We have so much that we don’t really wear.

JT: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. You’re a class act, Raul.

RO: Thank you, Jesse.[/SIZE]


Photo by Gordon De Los Santos.

Editor's note: here's Putthison's ep 2, featuring Raul.

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

 

[JakeLA]

I agree with Jesse. The poor should stop buying all that crap and invest in a decent pair of $2,000 shoes.

 

[chogall]

So no words on the end product, only marketing material so far?

 

[TheTukker]



So no words on the end product, only marketing material so far?

That's going to be Part IV, clearly.

 

[YoungAmerican]



So no words on the end product, only marketing material so far?

Not sure what you mean by this.

 

[wqvong]

Has anyone took the plunge...?

 

[chogall]

That's going to be Part IV, clearly.

The author stated it's a three part interview in Part I of the series.

Editor's note: Jesse Thorn is the founder and host of the long-running, recently retired pop culture interview series The Sound of Young America and cohost of comedy podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go!, and he recently launched a new show, Bullseye. He also produces Put This On, a video series and blog about dressing like a grownup that will soon begin its second season. Jesse has been a Styleforum member for a few years, and together with Put This On cowriter Derek Guy, he'll be contributing to Styleforum on an occasional basis, i.e., in the exceedingly rare moments when he's not in front of a mic or camera.

Jesse Thorn (left) and Raul Ojeda (right). Photo by Gordon De Los Santos.
There aren’t a lot of shoemakers left in the United States. When Raul Ojeda met one, he begged, wheedled and pleaded his way into an apprenticeship. His mentor, Willebaldo Rivera, was already in his 80s, at the tail end of a long career making shoes in Hollywood for folks like Charlton Heston and Bill Cosby. Raul spent years at Rivera’s side, learning the shoe-making techniques that Rivera only rarely used in his shop, which had over the years nearly stopped making shoes altogether.
When Rivera retired to Mexico, Ojeda took over the store, and focused on developing the shoemaking craft both in himself and his staff. His goal was to meet the standards of the European giants of shoemaking, but at home in Los Angeles. A few months ago, he opened one of the only storefronts in the United States dedicated to custom shoes, Don Ville, on a fashion-forward strip of La Brea Boulevard in Los Angeles.


In our three-part interview series, we’ll hear about Raul’s journey from shoe-shine entrepreneur to master craftsman.
Jesse Thorn: I want to get a little bit of your history first. You’ve been in the shoe business in some form or another for about 10 years, but you were doing shoe shines on the west side of Los Angeles when you walked into Willie’s and decided to try and become a shoemaker. Tell me about how you did that.
Raul Ojeda: Right out of high school, my late teens, I was persuaded by a very good friend of mine to join him on a shoe shining venture. He was thinking about going over to Las Vegas and taking over all the shoe shine stations in the whole city. I got a little bit of training and we drove over to Vegas and we ended up coming back after 2 weeks because you cannot be in a casino if you’re under 21. I was just 18 at the time.
JT: A tragic miscalculation.
RO: Who knew?! So I got back to Los Angeles and continued to work shining shoes. I got so many clients that enjoyed coming and hanging out rather than just getting a shoe shine. We started getting a lot of customers--so many customers that I couldn’t handle it on my own. So we had more people, at one point four of us, shining shoes at the same location.
How I got into Willie’s though, was that I started to get my clients’ shoes to get them repaired because they trusted me more than a shoe repair shop. I shopped around for a shop to do the work for us, and one thing led to another and I started bringing the work over to Willie’s. I started mentioning it to some of my clients and people who knew it were saying, “Oh, those guys go way back.” They knew more about it than me at the time. So hearing comments like that, I would start to get more in depth with Willie as far as building a better relationship and a nicer friendship and started asking him questions about his roots and how his business started.
That’s how I found out the shop’s been open since 1956, and when it first opened its doors it was a made to order shoe shop. Just like what we have going on here today. At that time his biggest clients were movie studios and costume designers that would come and have him measure people, or have him go out to stars’ homes to measure them and then make the shoes, and he got really big and famous among designers. And did very very well for himself. At one point he had 10 people working at the shop.
In 1982 we moved over to our current location on Cahuenga, a much bigger place. The first shop was only about 700 square feet; the new shop is about 2,000. And although the business was still really big in custom making, there were so many designers and department stores, and all these other shoe shops started to provide a huge variety of footwear. So the custom shoemaking that Willie was really big on started to become more of an alterations place. A lot of repairs, a lot of adjustments, because now instead of hiring Willie to make the shoes, now they’re bringing a pair of shoes to trick them out a little bit so they can do what they wanted, and before you knew it we became a shoe repair shop; shoemaking was 10 or 15 percent of our business.
When I came in there, the shoemaking capabilities stood out brightly, and shined so much more than the other shoe stores that I had worked with in the past. I just wanted to learn more about shoemaking. That was in 2004, and I started to work on the weekends, come in and help out, just Willy and me.
We’d close up the shop and have lunch and we just became closer friends and closer friends. To the point that I wasn’t shining shoes anymore during the week. I only had one gig, we shined shoes for the Santa Monica police station. I started at 6 in the morning, worked until 10, then rushed over directly to the shop and just worked the whole day.
JT: Willie was already in his 80s by the time that you started working with him. Had he passed this 50 years of experience to anyone, or was he planning to eventually retire and let the shop just be a regular, old-fashioned shoe repair shop?
RO: I think so. When I got there, he was at the point where working hard wasn’t a priority anymore. For Willie it became such an important part of his life. He would look forward to coming to the shop, but not so much to working (laughs).
He was extremely selective with the people he would do work for. If he didn't know you, he would totally tell you to go somewhere else. It was a total old, cranky shoe repair shop, a place where you couldn’t find anything. I don’t think he seriously planned for what he wanted to do in his later years, at all.
Sadly, his wife had just passed a few months before I met him. He was going though a transition--making the decision on what was going to happen with the rest of his life. Here I came along and started spending so much time with him. It just happened so naturally. We’d be having lunch and he’d be like “Next week, I’m gonna teach you how to do Goodyear welting. You’re gonna come in early.” I think that I became so much like him; he always starts conversation by making references to something old, and we ended up never working on what we were going to do. Then he’d be like, “Next week, we’re going to again try to do Goodyear welting. So you’re gonna come in the morning, and we’re gonna show you how to wax your thread...” So what I ended up doing, I had to start a lot on my own and have him correct me on the things I wanted to learn.
JT: How many years did you work with him in the shop?
RO: About 3 years. And then in 2007 I took over the shop completely. I took over the management, and he would continue to come to work. Even today he comes into work when he’s in town. He now spends a lot of his time down in Mexico. But whenever he’s in town he’ll be all day in the shop.
Even when I met him, his stitching lines were not flawless and straight and I could tell that that pissed him off so much that he would commission somebody else to sew it. Because he didn’t want to acknowledge that his touch had been a little worn out, if I may.

Lasts and shoes at Don Ville. Photo by Gordon De Los Santos.
JT: There are a lot of shoe repair places in Los Angeles and in the United States but there are not a lot of custom shoemakers. When did you realize that you were doing something special and had the opportunity to provide this service that nobody else was providing? There are maybe 10 custom shoemakers in the United States.
RO: Really, there are probably a lot more custom shoemakers in the United States. But people understand that businesses are difficult. So people work very small--they have one or two clients per month and work out of their home, or share space with someone else. After researching how many shoemakers in Europe, you know, London, the UK, France, Italy, and even some Spanish people, they travel to the United States to do trunk shows and take orders for well-crafted footwear, I started thinking to myself, “Why is it European people have to come here to make shoes for us?”
There’s not a lot of us doing it. There aren’t a lot of people who want to work with more people than just themselves. I know most of the good makers in the United States. They enjoy working at home. They enjoy working by themselves. They enjoy dealing with one or two people a month.
I don’t want to just do one or two pair a month, we want to be doing three or four pair of shoes per day here at the shop. Here’s something that I don’t get about the traveling operations like John Lobb: when John Lobb comes to the United States, and I have clients that get shoes made by them as well--it’s going to take 6 to 8 months to maybe a year to get your shoes, because that one guy who’s gonna measure you is going to go home and he’s going to work on your last, he’s going to work on your pattern 3 or 4 months after they see you for the first time because they’re just so backed up. I really don’t know how much quality you end up losing over that time.
The system that we run here at our shop, we’ll take your measurements (we just did measurements for you a couple weeks ago). We started work on your last right away. We get it adjusted, once it’s adjusted, we trace the pattern, and we start cutting the upper. In less than 1 month we have the dummy ready for you to try on--your shoe.
I took your measurements on a Saturday, correct?
JT: Right.
RO: On Tuesday I was taking another measurement for someone else and we started working on the last right away the week after. It’s only four of us who work here in the shop. So it’s a little bit difficult for me to understand why you have to sit on measurements for 3 or 4 months before you get to work on them. I realized you just need to have a more competitive team to work with you.
We need to make it more accessible. Although the quality of footwear and the approach that we utilize is based on generations and traditions and research on how other shoemakers really approach construction of a shoe, we do the same thing. We’re working on the shoes as a team. I’m as qualified as the two other guys on my team to do the same work. I just want to offer that for a competitive cost.
I don’t personally know a lot of millionaires, who have a $100,000 laying around in the budget to buy shoes over the next 10 years, because that’s what shoes cost! You know, Europeans, John Lobbs are about $6,000. Our shoes, the most expensive are maybe $2,000, maybe $2,400 when we have to start a last from the very beginning. I really don’t see how you should be paying 3, 4, $5,000 for each pair of shoes. I think you probably wouldn’t even want to wear them.
We want to offer shoes for the many of us that love and enjoy wearing shoes. That’s the inspiration for this shop. We want to have people come over, get their measurements, and have the shoe that they really want to wear that fits very well.
Don Ville
113 N. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323 932 9874
Part one of three.

Not sure what you mean by this.

Good interview but it reads and serves like a PR for Don Ville/RO than anything else.

A review on DV/RO's bespoke experience similar to Permanent Style on George Cleverley will be much much more helpful than the informercial on DV/RO's qualification, history and pricing.

 

[YoungAmerican]

It's an interview, not a review. I'm not interviewing Richard Nixon, and I'm not really sure what kind of confrontational question I'd ask in this situation. When Raul was on Put This On, I found his personal story really interesting, and I wanted to illuminate it in-depth in a way we couldn't really do in video, so I thought of him when SF asked if we wanted to contribute an interview to the site.

I haven't worn a pair that Raul has made for my foot, but I've handled pairs that Raul and his team have made, and I think they're beautiful. He uses the best leather and techniques, but I'm not a shoemaker, and I'm hard-pressed to evaluate the non-styling, non-fit difference between a $2000 and a $6000 shoe, if there is any. Frankly I think very few non-professionals would be able to distinguish between the non-styling elements of say a bespoke Lobb and a St. Crispin by handling them, outside of broad strokes, like style of welting and type of leather. I'm sure that anyone considering spending a few thousand dollars on bespoke shoes will take the time to handle them themselves.

I can tell you that I visited a bespoke shoemaker in Milano a few days ago, whose shoes were fantastically beautiful. As beautiful as Don Ville's, but not, to my eye, more so. He did some of the work on-premises, but some of it was done off-premises by contractors. Shoes cost three times what Raul charges to make them in Los Angeles, 100% in his shop. That's really impressive to me.

I've also found that the more time I spend talking to Raul, the more I like him, which is not always true for folks in the clothing business . He's a really decent man.

 

[chogall]

Again, its good PR for RO/DV especially with your broad readership (loyal reader of your blog, btw).

A documentary by a good journalist like you would be very interesting to read, especially when you are experiencing the whole process first hand.

Some questions that would be interesting to find out are how he manufacturers the last, what's his fitting method/trial shoes, how does his hand welting look like before sewing the outsole, what's the shape of the last, what's his signature artistic details, etc.

After all an interview of an artisan without demonstrating some of his creations is not that exciting.

 

[rcoreytaylor]

It appears as though there is some insinuation that this piece was not as objective or more critical as some might prefer...

I suppose that is relative to one's expectations. It wouldn't be out of the question for anyone to personally take the time and effort to produce a similar piece more along the theme of which they expect be presented. That of course takes work - the time and effort part.

I really appreciate the opportunity to read about Raul's shop - I wish I'd had an opportunity to visit when I was in LA a few weeks ago.

Cheers!

 

[evolsty]



After all an interview of an artisan without demonstrating some of his creations is not that exciting.

I completely disagree. It's important to remember that there are people behind the objects we covet. I like knowing how one of these people thinks about the things he creates.

There are numerous perspectives one could take on what Raul is doing. Jesse chose one and I appreciate that Raul, rather than just the shoes, is the focus.

 

[chogall]

I completely disagree. It's important to remember that there are people behind the objects we covet. I like knowing how one of these people thinks about the things he creates.
There are numerous perspectives one could take on what Raul is doing. Jesse chose one and I appreciate that Raul, rather than just the shoes, is the focus.

Focusing on a new artisan's life story before his creation is recognized or highly coveted is an interesting bet on his potential future success. PTO will benefit If RO/DV does become JLP or GC of US.

But then, it would be hard for me to imagine any artisan gaining grandmaster status without any publicity on their creations.

 

[YoungAmerican]

Or maybe I just think he's an interesting guy, trying to do an interesting thing.

 

[jawboneofa]

While the focus may not have been on every step in his method of construction, Jesse did uncover several tidbits along the way about how Raul creates his lasts, drafts heels, etc. It was an interview, not an instruction manual, and I thought it was fascinating, as someone interested in both the process and the artisan. I am sure that Jesse will, once in possession of his shoes, post something (either here or on PTO) about them.

Well done, Jesse. Really enjoyed the three installments. I'm looking forward to visiting Raul sometime soon, and I'm not in the least concerned you will profit from some under-the-table commission arrangement which is part of a secret plot to take over the fashion world through "PR pieces" on StyleForum.

 

[elev8rz]

I recently visited a leather repair shop and made friends with the young owner who plans to open a bespoke shoe shop within the next few years. He showed me his western boots (we're in Houston), which his grandfather handed down to him, and which he also re-crafted from a size 12 to a size 10. He also had a pair of his recently completed handmade shoes to show me. We talked for 20 minutes more about his current services. I went back 2 days later with a pair of monks needing a little work and we talked a good bit more, this time about how he began and where he wants to take this passion of his. After reading this interview, and comments, I realize I only once asked for pricing, and that was for the work on my shoes. All this is to say that the story is far more interesting (and readable for that matter) than pricing and product review, which Jesse never claimed this series to be. For those who are familiar with the PTO series, passion for one's craft, whether shoes or comedy writing, is the heart of its appeal.

I say well done. Thanks.