#020420: FRYE Archive/A Chinese Guy Designing Cowboy Boots
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April 2001 -Octorber 2003
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Jimlar, LLC/Fryeboots
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Full-time designer
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Job responsibilities including trend/color forecasting, footwear design, mastering handmade shoe construction, and development trips to Asia.
It certainly brings back a lot of memories as I am writing this blog piece. My design years at Frye brand was the most fun and the most challenging one as well. Frye is my first design job as a footwear designer, which marks my training period as a design assistant has completed. Now I am in the real world responsible for every pair of shoes I design and put in the market to be tested and criticized.
Frye is an authentic American leather goods brand specialized in footwear founded in 1863. During the 60’s the brand made boots for celebrities and presidents. Frye brand also introduced Harness boot which inspired by Civil War union solider.
My first pair of Frye boots was an 8” shaft Harness boots which remains in my footwear collection ‘til today. Harness boots are as American as they get. As a Chinese kid in the country for merely 5 years I didn’t have a good grasp of American culture and history.
Once I put on this pair of Harness boot, I felt I got my foot in the door of being a true American, literally. I felt as tough as any western frontier with four pieces of metal rings guarded by 8 pieces of leather straps. Working for Frye was the boost shot I needed being a true American as an immigrant.
Since I had no experiences with hand-made leather footwear prior to this job. I had to learn and soak every knowledge I can about leather, construction, of course design leather footwear. Fortunately the design director and fellow designers are very generous and awesome to work with, whom of many I still remain friends with today.
Indeed I was fascinated with leather. I love the smell of a piece of leather. I love the feel of leather in hand. There is no two pieces of leather the exact same. Each one has its own characteristics.
Here I began my lesson 101 of understand leather.
Different grades of a cow hide produces different grades of leather. There is the leather tanning where the characteristics of a piece leather are coming to life, such as veg tan finishing to preserve leather natural appearance; oil tan finishing to bring out the deep richness of a leather; and many more.
Disregard the knowledge I was lacking, drawing is one of the skills that I was able to contribute to my design at Frye. Photoshop rendering was my thing. With the unlimited access of leather swatches I scanned as many as unique leather swatch textures I can. Then I tested different footwear designs with all leather textures in photoshop rendering.
Even though I am not sure how useful these photo realistic renderings are but they certainly are fun to look at. I still have the habit applying textures to footwear designs these days.
Lesson number 2 is to learn the construction of traditional handcrafted footwear, from stitching out to Goodyear welt to California construction, etc. One of the most rare opportunities for me was to visit factories. Frye is my first experience set foot on a factory floor. The size and scale of footwear manufactory is an eye-opening. The skills and true craftsmanship in Brazil factory is mind blowing and quiet intimidating.
I remember vividly the trip to Brazil was overwhelming yet exiting. Not speaking Portuguese, unfamiliar with South America, talking to skilled footwear exports about my designs, all is very intimidating. Yet I am very glad that I had the opportunity learning footwear beyond pen and paper.
During my 2.5 years at Frye I designed and worked on a lot many projects than what I am displaying here. Unfortunately these product images and designs are the only ones that I am able to save with many lost and damaged hard drives. These images are scanned pages of my old physical portfolio book.
