“Shoes excite me, but I didn’t realize it until I came to New York,” said Alejandro Inglemo, whose family has been in the shoe and shoe design industry for nearly a century. Coming to New York and enrolling in a Vans Modern School of Shoe Designing made me realize this desire. “Of course, we as a family have such a desire to make shoes.”
Everyone agrees that good shoe design is a combination of skills, study and many influences that play an important role in the process of life. “Architecture has a great impact on this art, especially modern architecture, which is much more geometric,” Ingelmo says what I do always has weight and melody, and like the buildings of a city, it has many ups and downs. Not only do you need to know the function of the shoe, but you also need to know the foundation and the materials. There has to be fluidity in what I do. In general, the inspirations of the works I design come from the simple affairs of my daily life and the environment around me. So I cannot say exactly what they are. I am always inspired by different things. From getting stuck in traffic to the sunset scene in the city.”
“It’s more of a natural process,” Ingelmo says of the impact of art, music, literature, technology or politics on his career. “I see something and think about its interesting points.” “Everything I learned came from learning from my mistakes,” Ingelmo said, designing his own collection after an internship in Donna Karan, even before graduating from Pass Vans School. My grandmother and mother were very well-groomed and fashionable women. They dyed their hair a new clumsy style and used thick red lipsticks. They were originally Cubans, and so this allowed them to maintain the strong role of women in their families and to be very devoted mothers and wives. “It means both looking good and taking good care of the family.” The combination of personal beauty and family professional skills has caused the aesthetics of shoes in this family to have sexual appeal and extraordinary elegance.
Using this type of design skills has led him to master the stitches he uses in his shoes and to use innovative processes and completions. “You have to think about beautification, fashion and sexual attraction, and the comfort of the shoes should be considered along with them,” says Ingelmo. Ingelmo is constantly looking for ways to change the raw materials used in shoe production and is always thinking of overcoming restrictions. “If we love our work, we see events and experience them,” he says”.
Ingelmo has collaborated with the likes of Helmut Lang, Michael Bastian and Chris Benz in designing various collections and his current collection includes bags and shoes. The Ingelmo bag, called Tron City, looks like a bag because he wanted to design the right quality for going to the gym and then for a dinner party. The works of this well-known designer are very structured in general, and he himself says that composers, painters and even lawyers are among his clients.
