National Post s Retail Therapy Pt.2 | Keep on keepin on
I design things that I like I don t like mainstream things. (CBC Radio 3 interview) Canadian fashion icon, John Fluevog, started his shoe business in 1970, designing snakeskin platforms for disco, and pointy shoes with skulls and peace buckles for punk. He s always one step, as it were, ahead of the game. Here, he blogs about his 40-year legacy.John Fluevog for National Post s Retail Therapy
I recently had to psych myself up for the curator s walk-through at the Museum of Vancouver with Joan Seidl, the curator of the exhibit.
It s the history of me, Peter Fox and Ken Rice, and our careers and roles in the history of Vancouver.
Forty years of history and here I stand today. I still feel young, like I have so much more to do. Guess I m not 40 years at one thing is fairly long. I don t really want to tell anyone but, in a way, I don t think I have done all that well.
I was speaking with Silvana (a designer on our team) over coffee at JJ Bean. I mentioned to her that I thought we did not always do a good job at simply meeting people s expectations of the brand. It seems to me that a lot more people want to buy into the brand than we let in, but yet that may be why I m still in business after all these years. My shoes have always stood out in the marketplace.
Although I have had great freedom in my career to do what I feel like, I am also aware it s a job of simply doing what has been set before me. I need to remember what Jim Byrnes, our local blues/jazz legend who was in the store yesterday, said to my wife Ruth when she said to him Keep on doing what you do. He said, If I don t keep on doing it, I would explode.
I, like him, have a job to do and it s not over.
I think the thing about people like Jim and myself is that most people know what we do for a living. And the public judges how good a job we do.
I do need to keep on running. What else am I going to do? Sit on a beach? I don t think so.
I did the event. Everyone seemed to be smiling, so that was good. One question I got asked was, How do you get a job at John Fluevog? I told them you had to be persistent and knock the door down and really, really want to work there. I hope I don t have 100 people knocking my door down, because I don t have enough seats& yet.
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