London

The rock ’n’ roll shoemaker
Terry de Havilland

‘The 1960s? I got brain damage from that era from too much acid,’ chuckles 68-year-old cobbling legend Terry de Havilland in brusque cockney. He’s in jubilant spirits as he runs up the soles of his latest pair of canvas platform boots with a bold pop-art design. He’s just found out he’s going to be a professor for the University of the Arts, which now owns the UK’s most reputable shoe college, Cordwainers. Feature continues

Almost 50 years after de Havilland (born Terry Higgins) designed his first pair of shoes for his father’s Hackney shoe business, the man who invented the ‘fuck me shoe’ and propelled the absurdly impractical platform to high fashion status is enjoying a resurgence with a new pack of celebrity fans including trend-setters like Kate Moss, Alison Goldfrapp and feisty newcomers the Soho Dolls. Furthermore, his open-toe ‘Dede’ wedges have become one of the must-have accessories of label-loving girls about town this summer.

Despite the glitz and glamour surrounding the brand, de Havilland is still, at heart, a hands-on craftsman. He works from his humble Dalston studio alongside his fabric designer, muse and right-hand woman, wife Liz, whom he met 16 years ago through a mutual friend.

Unconventionally, de Havilland draws the designs directly on to the last (pictured opposite) before making the pullovers (the leather, snakeskin or canvas fabrics the shoe is formed from). ‘I can’t draw on paper – I make Lowry look like a portrait painter – but I’m very comfortable drawing on lasts,’ he explains. With a few simple cutting tools and a Singer sewing-machine that, in his words, is ‘older than my wife’ he then goes about creating the prototypes. Shoemaking is an instinctive process for de Havilland, who can be inspired by a person or simply a great fabric. In his archive there are iconic Wonder Woman stars and stripes platforms, ‘Rocky Horror Show’ stilettos and his signature patchwork snakeskin wedges.

Born in Barking in 1938, de Havilland has shoemaking in the genes: his earliest memories include helping his father assemble shoes in the shed at the bottom of the garden for the black market in the 1940s. The following decade, his father was making mainly winklepickers. ‘After a while he didn’t have any work so I thought: I’ll get him some work, and chiselled the toes off the last and designed some shoes that started selling,’ he says.

A trip to Rome in the late ’50s inspired some three-tiered snakeskin wedge sandals that caught the eye of chum Johnny Moke, who started selling them at his Kensington Market boutique Rowley & Aram. They were an instant hit with Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg and the rest of the rock ’n’ roll set. De Havilland fast became embroiled in the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, hanging out with pop stars, beautiful women and indulging in the obligatory drink and drugs. But in his heyday he shod the soles of everyone from Jackie Kennedy and Cher to David Bowie and Led Zeppelin.

De Havilland relaunched his label in 2004 after suffering a heart attack. ‘It was a wake-up call,’ he says. ‘I’d gone as far as I could go with goth and fetish shoes [his specialism throughout the ’80s and ’90s] and wanted to get back to doing sexy shoes again.’ Stylist Karl Plewka commissioned him to design a range of shoes for the spring/summer 2004 FrostFrench show at London Fashion Week and his gutsy platforms stole the show, shunting the de Havilland aesthetic firmly back in the fashion spotlight.

Now five decades into his cobbling career, this ageing rocker – last in one hand and pencil in the other – is back doing what he loves best and his craft has barely changed. In August he has some vintage ’50s shoemaking machinery arriving so he can make more bespoke shoes to meet the renewed demand.

‘It’s like getting back to work for me,’ he says with a twinkle in his eye.

For stockists call 01252 730618 or visit www.terrydehavilland.com.

Ricardo Matmos merges a modern aesthetic with an old printing technique

The conceptual screen-printer
Ricardo Matos

Up on the third floor of a tall, shabby Victorian building on Whitechapel Road, Portuguese textile designer Ricardo Matos works on his monochromatic screen prints in a cramped studio he shares with three designers . There are sewing-machines, reels of yarn, rolls of fabric, old dummy busts, piles of books and magazines and, on one wall, what looks like a religious shrine. In Matos’s corner there are framed silk-screens, numerous rolls of tracing paper with bold black and white designs and two large squeegees (the flat, rubber-edged blades used to push the ink through the screens). It’s chaotic, but infinitely more appealing than your average office space.

Matos, 33, studied textiles at Goldsmiths before spending a year learning processing techniques at the fabric workshop and museum in Philadelphia. He graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in printed textiles in 2004, having developed a passion for digital prints . ‘A digital print is basically like a photocopy… there are endless possibilities in terms of process and it’s quite environmentally friendly,’ he says. That said, he is also a dab hand at classic screen-printing, merging a modern aesthetic with an age-old technique.

‘I love the process of screen-printing,’ he explains. ‘It’s a bit like producing the negative of a film – you create the positive image on paper, then it becomes negative on the screen.’ He mainly works with photographs, abstracting and enlarging the images, cropping them and using fragments of them on the screens.

Matos met fellow Portuguese designer Rui Leonardes (one of his studio-mates) while studying at the RCA. Leonardes, who designs his own fashion label, asked Matos to come up with some prints that encapsulated the theme of ‘packaging for the body’ for his autumn/winter 2006 collection. ‘I took the concept and ran a mile with it. I translated “packaging” as cardboard and started looking at the texture,’ he explains. Odd though it might sound, the results – striking, enlarged linear representations of corrugated cardboard – are surprisingly wearable.

For Matos, inspiration can come from the simplest, most banal of objects. ‘I’m currently fascinated by graffiti and vegetation you find in London’s train tunnels. I like the combination of urban and natural,’ he says.

He’s also inspired by German expressionist art and is an admirer of the work of fashion designers Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and Jonathan Saunders but sees the future of print design in interiors: ‘People like Timorous Beasties, Neisha Crosland and Linda Florence are all doing bold and interesting prints for the home. It’s somehow easier to have a vibrant print on a cushion or wallpaper than it is on a jacket.’

And his advice for aspiring print designers? ‘Be open-minded, flexible and assertive – there are a lot of people out there ready to rip you off.’

For Rui Leonardes’ designs with Ricardo Matos’ prints call 020 7247 2874. For more info on Ricardo Matos’ print designs email ricardo.matos@rca.ac.uk.