Norman Vilalta

For the past 13 years, Nor­man Vi­lalta has been on a “per­sonal voy­age”, after he de­cided to give up his pro­fes­sion as a lawyer in Buenos Aires and start his ap­pren­tice­ship as an ar­ti­san shoe­maker in Italy. Now this Ar­gen­tin­ian born in Patag­o­nia is based in Barcelona, and has be­come one of the best-known ar­ti­san shoe mak­ers in the coun­try. From his work­shop on c/ Enric Grana­dos, he makes ex­clu­sive be­spoke shoes for clients all over the world. Each pair is unique and com­pletely hand-made, and he spends about 200 hours on each pair of shoes. Nor­man shares with us some of the things he started his voy­age with, and oth­ers he has picked up along the way

8. Ham­mer from my grand­fa­ther & French wooden tool. When I was learn­ing how to make shoes as an ap­pren­tice in Flo­rence, my mother re­moved the rust from my grand­fa­ther's cob­bling ham­mer to give it to me. He wasn't a shoe­maker, he was a fish­er­man from the south of Italy. It hap­pened that it was the tra­di­tion at that time to fix the fam­ily's shoes to save money. I still re­mem­ber when I was a child look­ing at it, who could have said that I would use this tool all the time. The French wooden tool was added later on a trip to a French flea mar­ket.

1, 7. Shoe­maker's chair & last mak­ing bench blade. For ar­ti­sans, our tools have a very im­por­tant mean­ing. We use them and, when we don't use them any more, there is a tra­di­tion of pass­ing them on to an­other shoe­maker. My “com­pan­ion” from the be­gin­ning was my shoe­maker's chair. I've used it each day for more than 10 years and I got it from a shoe­maker friend, ac­tu­ally one of the best I have ever met, Josep Cu­nillera. It is the same with this last mak­ing bench blade in my hand, a very rare tool. This one is more than 10 years old and is com­pletely hand-made.

4, 5, 6, 3: Pon­cho, red hat, for­mal hat, or­ange gloves. I love my great An­dean pon­cho, the colours, its form, I use it a lot in win­ter. For more than a year my red hat has been al­most my sig­na­ture, as well as my for­mal hat. I like hats and gloves be­cause they are an im­por­tant part of our style, and strong colours chase away the bor­ing win­ter.

2, 9, 10. Fly fish­ing reel, Decon Chelsea boots, Wabi Sabi shoes. I love going fish­ing in the Pyre­nees and my fly fish­ing reel came with me all the way from my na­tive Patag­o­nia. The in­spi­ra­tion for my Wabi Sabi Col­lec­tion prob­a­bly comes from Japan and Patag­o­nia. Fi­nally, the Decon Chelsea boots are one of my per­sonal de­signs that I sell all over the world.

www.​nor​manv​ilal​ta.​com