The Perfect Fit

Claudio E. Benzecry is associate professor of communication studies and sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession and the coeditor of Social Theory Now, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

"Much of what we see and imagine in the high-profile world of luxury shoes is all glamour--stylish men and women scouting and displaying trends we never imagined but rave over once discovered. But a shoe is a commodity, and the elite world of fashion design must work hand-in-glove with the factories that produce innovative footware. In The Global Shoe, Claudio Benzecry gives us an in-depth look at the shoe industry, showing how all the people who contribute to shoe production, from jet-setting trend spotters to factory floor laborers, are engaged in the enterprise of fashion design, and that even the most logistical types of knowledge contribute to this creative act. First are the trendspotters, who make use of expensive shoe trend databases. Then come the designers, who fly around the world buying as many shoes as they can before sketching up new designs inspired by these fashions. Top candidates are sent, along with detailed instructions about materials, to China so that a prototype can be made. But that's not the end of the story. Once a prototype has been made, it has to be tested on real feet. Enter the fit girl. These are women with just the right size and shape feet who test and model shoes. They are far more powerful than you would imagine, however. A shoe design cannot be approved if a fit model declares a shoe too uncomfortable. Only after they've given the stamp of approval does a shoe go on to production. Working with designers, the fit girls and factory managers strategize about how to edit a design to get the fit, materials, and look just right. Ultimately, Benzecry uncovers that the global production of commodities is not so divided as we usually think, with the intellectual labor of design taking place in the first world and the manual labor of production in the developing world. Rather, the work of making a shoe from start to finish requires a global movement of ideas and expertise"