The Curator's Eye

The Shoes of Beth Levine

Summer Boot, 1970

It’s the shoes that make the star, whether the star is Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice or Nancy Sinatra belting out “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” in 1966. But who made the shoes that made the stars? “Beth Levine,” says Nora Atkinson of Bellevue Arts Museum, whose show Beth Levine: First Lady of Shoes, co-curated by Levine biographer Helene Verin, opens February 18.

Levine, who died in 2006, shod three First Ladies and was a first lady herself in many ways. “She was one of the first shoe designers in the country not just copying European designers,” says Atkinson, “and a phenomenon – a woman in a man’s profession.” When she first applied for the bottom-level job that would propel her to the top, her puzzled male interviewer innocently asked, “What would a woman want with money?”

Soon Levine’s artistry was pulling in big bucks from big people, including Marilyn Monroe. Fitting the First Ladies presented its challenges. “She had to rearrange their schedules so Jackie Kennedy and Pat Nixon wouldn’t meet in her showroom,” Atkinson says. Besides being first in sales, Levine was ahead of the aesthetic curve. “She was the first person to do stilettos, usually credited to Christian Dior.
She popularized mules. Her big innovation in the late ’50s was the fashion boot. Boots at the time were only for foul-weather wear.”

Levine’s shoes could get as weird as Schiaparelli’s hats – it took real magic to walk in her Aladdin’s Lamp shoes. But her work was the real thing, and at one time was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “This is the first fashion-oriented show in the Northwest,” says Atkinson. “It’s nice to take it out of the department stores and make you look at the history behind it.” •

THE ARTIST

Lifespan of Levine Shoes, Inc.
1948-1975

Levine’s own shoe size
4

Number of Coty Fashion Awards won
2 (a record)

Strangest shoe-lining material
Astroturf

What Manolo Blahnik said about her
“She is to shoes what Eames is to furniture.”