RISD Footwear Affinity featuring Allison Spahr 86 TX
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thank you welcome to the risi footwear affinity event featuring allison sparr please note that this event will be recorded and posted online by rizzy and may also be posted by any external parties involved so please turn off your video if you do not wish to have your image shown and we are thinking that we will turn off the recording after the presentation so that we can um talk freely amongst ourselves so go ahead allison i'll let you introduce yourself on the zoom tonight is me sarah garan and daphne board we're the founders of the footwear risky affinity group and i am a western boot maker in wakefield massachusetts i was a 1999 architecture grad and daphne you could say who you are um i'm daphne board i'm a shoemaker out in western massachusetts um and i was a risd 1998 grad in textiles take away allison hi everybody my name is allison sparr and i graduated a really long time ago in 1986 and studied textiles and my career has taken a lot of twists and turns and so tonight i've put a bunch of slides together just to show you sort of where i started and where i ended up and having the background at risd really gave me the opportunity to be able to pivot and do a lot of different things in my career and so i'll just start scrolling through some of the things that i've done so after i graduated i went straight to new york city because i felt like that's what i needed to do i got to go to new york i got to make a name for myself do all of these uh big design things and uh there's a picture of me at my desk i was on the 29th floor of um a high-rise building working for burlington industries and i was doing um service design and really targeting middle market kmart jcpenney's were some of the largest customers and so you can see they were lots of florals this was back in the day when there was no computers so i painted everything by hand and these are some of my paintings that ended up going into production and getting printed for apparel so all the surface designs were geared for apparel i had a couple other jobs i didn't put all my jobs in on tonight um after i left new york i moved up to boston i'm originally from new hampshire and so i think you know the little new hampshire girl needed to go to new york city and and figure out what was going on in the design world and then i slowly started making my way backwards back towards new hampshire and so i took a job with a company called susan bristol and they were in the shrap building years ago and they were apparel company and they were making these little matchy-matchy sweaters and um printed apparel to go with their sweaters and so i was hired as their service designer and so i was still doing a lot of florals painting by hand um the picture on the right is my claim to fame i made it on the cover of women's wear daily that's one of the prints that i did for susan bristol and it was taken from an antique swatch we used to do a lot of antique shopping and we would take a lot of the old designs and render them and recolor them and that was one of the designs that made it on the cover after i left susan bristol i went to work as a textile design manager for victoria's secret and so i was running a department that did all the printed surface designs for all their pajamas and their lingerie so it was still in the apparel business still surface design and this was one of the first um computer generated pieces of artwork that i did on the right hand side and um not growing up and not using computers when i was at risd they were pretty crude of the first programs that came out but they were able to get done what we needed to get done and so it was a big learning curve on the job after i left susan bristol i got hired at malden mills which is in lawrence massachusetts or was in lawrence massachusetts and i remember going to my interview and the building looked like this that i pulled up to and i thought i don't know this doesn't look like it looks like an abandoned building but what it was was inside was like a treasure of textile manufacturing and it was still running in new england and once you got inside it was like willy wonka's chocolate factory um i ended up spending 24 years there and um i had a really amazing career there i started out as a textile designer and back in the day when they were making printed flock and it was for furniture um import export we sold 200 000 yards of printed flock a week which is a lot of flock um what happened was well then i also was working on material development um and this was a knitted rachelle material so i did some work with bob timberlake i did some work with harrods we always had some really cool customers that were looking to do different things so i started branching out doing um some woven design knitted design um so having my textile background at rizzy where they they forced me to weave even though i really felt like i wanted to be a surface designer they wanted me to keep weaving because they felt i had some talent in the weaving and it ended up paying off in some of the jobs that i've had i did a lot of material development for um different types of furniture companies pottery barn was one this was a slipcover that we came up with a material that you could cover and it was made out of the polar fleece material it was the first time they had made something that didn't stretch like the apparel fabric so it was pretty cool um and then in 1995 i don't know if you guys all know about there was a fire that destroyed these mill buildings and there were three major buildings that went up in flames in december and it was so cold they the water just from the um fire men trying to put the fire out just froze and they couldn't even do anything so they just stood and watched the buildings burn practically and so my office and the whole design studio was in one of those buildings and so we lost everything that night and we had put back in the day we had put our all of our designs we would back them up to an optical disk every night and put them in a firebox and the fire was so strong that the box actually melted and so we had no history of any of our artwork or any of the designs for years so what happened was we ended up having the opportunity to bid out all new software and we had the latest greatest brought in and they ended up building a state-of-the-art textile facility and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do keep things running they kept all the design staff on paid us to stay and work we had temporary offices set up so it was a pretty historic moment [Music] once we got everything up and running you know this building is still there but they've since shut down and moved out in the last few years so through polartec we did a lot of textile pattern design after the fire we switched from um doing upholstery furniture to apparel designs because the polar fleece was making a lot more money than the furniture fabric so we did a lot of printed fleece and you'll probably still see some of these things walking around on kids because this material is indestructible um so patagonia of course was one of the the founding customers that created the sinchilla fleece at patagonia and we did all the kids prints for them ll bean was a big customer so we were always doing the design work for them athleta acorn so this just gives you an idea of some of the design work that was created for fleece performance fabrics while i was there i also was in charge of all the color development so i was able to come up with the color palettes the color stories naming everything i also love to take photographs and so i worked really closely with the marketing department and i was always taking the pictures for the color cards and a lot of the marketing materials um marketing collateral i did all the photography work for for these type of things that would get shipped out to customers um then we were always trying to do innovative different business developments and so we worked with um celie and we were coming up with a mattress ticking fabric that would wick the moisture away and keep you cool while you were sleeping so we were trying to take all the attributes that the performance apparel fabrics and turn them into furniture fabrics so sealy was one and and there's a you know the um the beds up at the top or um how the end product came out and it had a very modern contemporary look to it then i also did some contract um furniture fabric and uh that got shown at neocon so that was the first time that they had done any material development for the contract furniture business and then after that we ended up getting stinson who's a major player in the contract furniture world um to do a collab with us this was sort of before people even knew what the word collab meant um and so we created this collection called fit bipolar tech and so i worked with all the engineers to come up with the knitted structures of the materials the color stories in the marketing collateral um and then tanya nayak who is hgtv restaurant impossible she approached us and wanted to do a restaurant with us um and we created all the fabric for the restaurant where they would come in and i don't know you guys have seen this show that they come in and they turn the restaurant around in 24 hours and she's a pretty fantastic interior designer decorator it's pretty it's pretty impossible what they get done in 24 hours so that was really fun then we've done some projects with knoll where we were creating a new fabric that was going to go in the back of the chairs and then the surround systems it's funny when i was putting these slides together i was thinking about how many years ago this was done and the surrounding systems are really coveted friendly now and people are building a lot of items like that these days just to protect different areas of the office spaces as people come back so i started as a designer there i got promoted to design a director of design and then when i finished my career there i was the vice president of global design and that wrapped up 24-year career there i did a lot of really fun things traveled all over the world but decided it was time to do something different and so i got hired by this little startup in portsmouth new hampshire called coolcore and i was hired as their vice president of innovation and product development and they were making chemical free cooling fabrics and so it was sort of right up my alley with the apparel uh knitted structures um and they had a really great technology with their um their yarn construction and a lot of people were applying techniques with chemicals to make the materials cool and cool core had a proprietary construction that surpassed all of the items that have chemicals on them and so their materials were really great for performance wise i interrupt for a second yeah do you mean the cool core fabrics were it was just structural in the way that the fabric was knit that that's what was cooling as opposed to any kind of uh chemical apply yeah it's a combination of the um the knit or the yarn cross section and the knit construction and i can't tell you all the secrets are all good yeah um but what was really fun was um here's some pictures of some mills over in asia so i worked a lot over in asia in the shanghai area at some textile mills and that's one of the things that i'm really grateful for my career is i love to make things and i love to see how things are made and being able to get in these factories it's fascinating seeing how a piece of fabric is made and just the um all the work that goes into setting up a creel and a knitting machine it's hours and hours and hours um so after i left cool core i went to timberland um and they hired me as their director of material development so when i was interviewing the position was for um running the material development for footwear and i had never been doing much in footwear i had done some materials throughout my career but nothing major and i said to my boss i don't know anything about leather i don't know anything about compounds and she said don't worry you have a team of people you have the management skills you'll be able to learn and um and keep everything running and so it was it was really interesting late in my career um all that i had to learn um but i think it was what was really challenging and interesting for me um so one of the first things that i did um i had the opportunity to go on a sustainable raw materials tour in south africa and it was organized by this company called organimark and they are based in south africa and so for two weeks there was a group of about 12 of us from all over the world that were selected as sustainable material suppliers and we traveled to all of the sustainable material manufacturers in south africa and we did everything from regenerative leather tours we went and saw the mohair trading home houses we did some cotton spinning [Music] it was two weeks of fascinating i had never been to south africa before and it was really a highlight of my career so this picture is a picture of my life at timberland so my responsibility at timberland was putting a toolkit together for the design team and the product developers to use and so this just shows you in spring 20 the amount of materials that got put together and color stories were put at the top the themes were put together and this was in the materials library and each material each leather had to have a standard setup and a color code assigned to it before the design team could even think about using it and so the materials team was responsible for getting the entire toolkit put together which was a really big undertaking and you can just see the vastness of how many materials go into making footwear and this is just really the upper of the footwear material this doesn't even include the laces and the trims and the insoles and the outsoles is that a separate team no that was um all part of my team um oh i've got some other pictures that show you so everybody knows the timberland yellow boot i didn't realize how many parks went into making a boot until i got into a boot factory and you can see over on the left all the leather pieces that are cut and hanging and moving through the conveyor belt in the factory and then the uppers are on the right hand side before they're attached to the outsole timberland really focused a lot on um sustainable materials so that was um a really great thing for me to work on one of the projects that we spearheaded was starting to work with haiti and have them grow cotton for the first time in three decades and um it's really it's unfortunate they just had another earthquake but it's just a poor poor country and so timberland started this program where they were growing trees to help the farmers down there and it's turned into well let's see if we can get them to start growing cotton again because the conditions are perfect and they really need a crop that they can actually sell and make some money from and so i started this whole program where we got the first harvest done and i flew down for the first harvest and this is the picking of the first cotton harvest and i think i haven't checked lately but i think the shoes are going to be um coming to market this year where they actually we took the cotton we imported into the united states we had material made and then the shoes were made from the material from the haiti cotton it was really fun being down there because these kids they had never even seen a computer before they had never even seen what they look like because they don't have mirrors and they don't have cell phones and they were just so interested in everything that i was doing and working on and look at their eyes they're just adorable one of the other things i worked on because my team handled all the materials going into footwear was the sustainable materials natural rubber tencel cork on the left is an actual rubber tree i was in vietnam at some rubber plantations and it's fascinating how they have to get up at three o'clock in the morning tap the tree and it just slowly drips into those little buckets or little dishes and they empty it and collect it and that's how they get the natural rubber [Music] i did a lot of work with different compounds conventional rubber eva recycled rubber the true cloud is a new um footbed that i developed while i was there and then there's a sugarcane i'll go back we also worked on regenerative ranching so that was the first time that timberland had done anything with the regenerative leather and that we sourced from farms where they're um cattle are grazing so that they are not destroying the land and it's kind of like a grass-fed it's a grass-fed beef shoe so it's um it's better for the environment and better for the animals i had never been in a a leather factory before i went to work at timberland and it's really fascinating watching leather made and on the left it's a conveyor belt of leather that's just hanging in the ceilings of this factory and there's thousands and thousands of hides that are getting circulated and after they get processed they hang them it's almost like going to the dry cleaner and it moves around and it moves around the whole factory and it's the drying process and when it's curing um one of the other this was before everybody was was doing um recycled polyester um timberland wanted to figure out how they could make something with the recycled polyester so we came up with a fabric called the rebottle fabric and this was made from the plastic water bottles put into footwear this is a beautiful day in hong kong no fog no smog this is uh i wonder if i can get the video to work what is that so that's not taffy it's um it's an eva material and that is them after it's been mixed they run it through and it will circle around and around until it gets the air out and it's the right consistency and then it gets pressed into a mold and made into a an outsole or midsole and that is going to be the green stride that is just launched now at one called um natural comfort platform and it's it's made with the sugar cane so does that ask a question about that is that like available in different densities or is it just like no it's just it was um this one was developed um specifically for one density and um it's very similar to the all birds hurricane midsole but we made ours a little bit harder because we wanted to have it as a ground contact so just a lot of working with the um asia factories coming up with the um specs that were needed a lot of the outsoles from the compounds were a combination of rubber and eva and you can see the one on the right was one that had a lot of parts that needed to get molded together different colors this is a factory that was making the um the rubber lug sole for the yellow boot you can see up on the left is the natural rubber before it gets processed gets put into little strips then it goes into the manufacturing of it with the ovens and they press it and then it comes out looking just the way you need it to most of the time [Music] the picture on the left is a combination of all the different materials that's going to go into making an outsole that one they they'll just take it and put it into a mixer and it ends up melting down together and then it goes into what i call the taffy taffy machine and then it gets put into molds and you've got your outsoles so there's so many different parts that go into making a shoe um this is an interesting um company called lacte cavea and they make natural rubber outsoles and i had the opportunity to go and hand pour some outsoles for timberland on the left it's the mixture from the natural rubber and you pour it into these molds and they're sitting in warm water and then they they get flipped out into the water after they're molded and then they go into an oven and it's cured and it has minimal additives to it so that was pretty fun and then i was in a shoelace factory it's really noisy so the one on the left is a shoelace getting made and the one on the right is a material for an upper the mesh getting knitted and then everything needs tags and labels and there's some labels getting made and so it's it's really interesting you can see all the the needles at the top each one of them has one thread pulled through to create the label so if one thread is broken then there's a defect in it so there's a lot of attention that needs to be looked at when they're making textiles for footwear so i got to have a little fun too while i was traveling i always tried to go to the local markets see what was going on get inspiration from the local people um this was a shoe store in um vietnam that i went to and they said do you want a pair of boots and i said sure what kind of boots you're going to make and so i walked in and they put my foot on a piece of paper and they drew around my foot on a piece of paper and that's how they measured my foot and they made a pair of chelsea boots for me and they were ready the next day i came back i tried them on i picked out the leather the color the soles and they were forty dollars and i love my boots from vietnam it was really quite interesting to see um this is called hot shop i don't know if anybody's heard of hot shop um echo puts a well before covid they used to um do a um a workshop once a year and they would invite designers from around the world to their headquarters in the netherlands and you would spend four days working in the echo tannery and coming up with latest greatest coolest ideas and it was really fun to meet people from around the world and um it was accessory designers it was footwear designers it was apparel designers and at the end of the workshop you presented out what your new idea was and it was sort of kind of like a marketing and innovation play for for echo so on top of all the factory work there's a lot of trade shows that i went to lineappel material connection in new york city premier vision in paris and new york and then just drawing inspiration from places around the world like beautiful desserts that turned into a textile design and on the right hand side are little rugs made from pom-poms and that ended up turning into a color story i'm at a persimmon factory here in uh taiwan and uh always enjoying the the local the local food so what i'm doing now is i call myself out a spark creative i do some design consulting color and trend forecasting material innovation education and teaching community engagement and some commission painting so there's a 3s art space in portsmouth where we do a project up cycle and goodwill donates all the um clothing and it's kind of like um project runway where you have a certain amount of time and you have to take the goodwill apparel and turn it into a fashion piece usually an evening gown so i was a judge two years ago and i do a lot of work with them with the sustainability portion of it i do some lectures at schools and i do color and trend development and i do some commission artwork for fun and that's me in a nutshell a quick one do you have any questions that was great thanks um i don't have a question just yet but i have did you have a big list of questions um do we want to stop recording so we could just talk sure yeah not sure how to do that maybe she shut it off [Music] i think katrina left can you shut it off from where you are oops there was a record button at the bottom i don't think i have
2021-09-11 00:13