Herbert Levine shoes

Here’s your delicious A-list of Herbert Levine shoes. Herbert Levine is a leading manufacturer of high-fashion women’s shoes for nearly three decades, founded by Herbert Levine, an American fashion executive and his wife Beth Levine.

If you have never heard of Beth Levine, an American fashion designer most known for her designs from the 1940s through the 1970s, it is not surprising. Her name was not on her shoes. She designed shoes for 30 years under the label Herbert Levine.

They won a Neiman-Marcus award and two Coty American Fashion Critics Awards for their innovations, which included backless shoes, shoes made of Ultra suede, extremely pointed toes, all-in-one stretch boots and pants connected all-over jeweled shoes and transparent vinyl shoes with Lucite heels.

Herbert Levine shoes

Herbert Levine shoes were worn by many famous women, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Pat Nixon, Lady Bird Johnson, Babe Paley and Liza Minnelli.

• Herbert Levine. Born in 1916, Herbert Levine graduated from Dartmouth College in 1937 and worked as a journalist for Gannett newspapers and various fashion trade publications before taking a job as sales and advertising manager for Andrew Geller, a shoe company. He was never himself a designer, but attained success when he married Elizabeth Katz (Beth Levine), a shoe model turned designer. They met when he interviewed her for a design position. They were married in 1946. He focused principally on running the business of the Herbert Levine label, while she served as head designer for the company. He died in 1991, aged 75.
• Beth Levine. “My mother always thought a fine pair of shoes was a necessity. And my father dealt with horses and cows, so I knew about leather.” Beth Levine says. One of her most fanciful ideas, though it did not catch on, was the “upper-less shoe,” which was merely the sole of a high-heeled shoe with an adhesive insole that attached to the bottom of the foot. Her most outrageous designs, driving shoes made to look like race cars, elaborately carved wooden blocks that looked like birds in flight and evening shoes that looked like Aladdin’s lamp, were included in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1976, when she and her husband retired. She died in 2006, aged 91.
• Herbert Levine, Inc. Founded in 1948, although the Herbert Levine label was named after publicity-savvy former-journalist Herbert Levine, Beth Levine was the primary shoe designer of the label from 1948 until 1975. Beth Levine designed the shoes while Herbert handled the factory management, sales and marketing. Beth Levine described their vision for the label by saying, “We wanted to create a shoe making niche. We were making very pretty shoes that nobody needed, but everybody wanted.” In 1954, Stanley Marcus said: “Beth and Herbert Levine step into the fashion foreground with shoe designs of such architectural perfection that they might have come from Da Vinci’s notebooks.”

Where Can I Buy Herbert Levine shoes

Herbert Levine gained media notoriety for outlandish designs that kept the brand in the news: gilded wood platforms, slippers with newspaper, money, or candy-wrapper covered fabrics, AstroTurf insoles, and shoes that were glued onto the wearer’s nylon stockings. Herbert Levine’s greatest influence however was re-introducing boots to women’s fashion in the 1960s and the popularization of the shoe style known as mules.

The first Herbert Levine factory was established on 31 West 31st Street in New York on January 1949. The factory started with a production of 400 pair of shoes a week to reach 200 employees producing 5,000 pair of shoes a week in 1954. In 1975, Herbert Levine, Inc. was still making 900 pair of shoes a day. Unfortunately, it was closed in 1975, the label was revived in 2007 by Bernardo Footwear LLC and is today under the roof of a Luxembourg investment fund. There was a retrospective of the Herbert Levine shoes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1976, one year after the business closed. The Metropolitan Museum of Arts stocks a collection of 140 pair of Herbert Levine. Check out more in Beth Levine shoes.

Herbert Levine shoes