KOLUMN Magazine
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In the American imagination, the shoemaker is a minor character—someone you visit only when something breaks. But in Black life, the making and mending of shoes has often been closer to infrastructure: a trade that kept households moving, kept wages within reach, and, in the most literal sense, kept people on their feet.
There were enslaved shoemakers on plantations and estates, producing and repairing shoes not as a quaint craft but as a hard requirement of forced labor economies. At Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, scholarship indicates enslaved shoemakers were a continuous presence, with individuals recorded by name in the historical record. At George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the estate describes the shoemaker’s shop as operational necessity—issuing and repairing shoes for enslaved workers so labor would not be interrupted.
To tell the story of Black-owned shoemakers—historic and contemporary—you have to sit with that contradiction: Black people were central to footwear’s function in America while being systematically excluded from footwear’s wealth. The trade created skill, then created dependence, then created new forms of invisibility once factories took over. The modern boom in Black-owned footwear brands is, in part, a correction—an attempt to move from anonymous labor to named authorship, from “a good pair of shoes” to a business with a balance sheet.
That correction has arrived in multiple dialects: luxury brands that treat the shoe like architecture; performance-first sneaker lines built from athlete knowledge; and ethically oriented companies that treat supply chains as part of the design brief. It also arrives as something quieter: the refusal to accept that the only future for Black craft is to be subcontracted.
This is a story about how that refusal looks in leather, rubber, and the complicated geometry of a heel.
Before “brands,” there were benches: Black shoemaking in the U.S.
In the earliest America, shoemaking was a skilled trade organized through apprenticeship, with shoemakers and cobblers holding a respected place in local economies. That structure wasn’t neutral; access to apprenticeship, tools, and shop ownership was filtered through race. Still, Black shoemakers existed—some free, many enslaved, all operating inside a country that tried to decide whether their skill should count as proof of humanity or merely evidence of utility.
The record is scattered, because the archive often treats Black craft as incidental. Yet fragments show a pattern: shoemaking was among the skilled labors performed by enslaved people throughout the South, and after emancipation, those skills became a pathway into independent work—repair shops, small businesses, a trade that could travel with you when property could not. In some places, the census becomes the evidence: names and occupations that appear like brief lanterns in the dark, such as African American shoemakers recorded in local enumerations.
And then there are the first-person accounts that reveal the social reality behind the skill. In an antebellum-era narrative preserved by the National Humanities Center, William J. Brown—born free in Rhode Island—describes pursuing work as an apprentice shoemaker while facing discrimination and unethical treatment from white employers. The detail matters because it clarifies what “trade” meant for Black Americans: not just learning a craft, but navigating a system determined to extract the value of that craft while restricting the benefits of it.
Shoemaking also shaped the physical experience of bondage and freedom. The plantation shoe was often a rationed object: issued annually, repaired until it failed, and replaced not for comfort but for labor continuity. Mount Vernon’s own description emphasizes repair as a strategy against lost labor time. On the other end, the ability to buy, choose, and maintain footwear became part of what freedom looked like—an ordinary dignity.
The transition from craft shops to industrial production reshaped footwear in the late 19th century, reorganizing labor and profit. The most emblematic figure here is Jan Ernst Matzeliger, a Surinamese-American inventor whose automatic shoe-lasting machine revolutionized shoe manufacturing—dramatically increasing the number of shoes that could be produced and reducing cost. Matzeliger’s story is a reminder that Black contribution to footwear is not only artisanal; it is technical, mechanical, and foundational to the way modern shoes are made at scale.
But industrialization did not automatically create equitable ownership. If anything, it widened the gap: more shoes, less control over who profits from the process.
Which is why the modern wave of Black-owned footwear brands can be read as something larger than commerce. It is an attempt to move the locus of power—toward the designer, toward the founder, toward the company that gets to say: this is ours, we made it, and the value returns to us.
Luxury as reclamation: When Black founders define “premium”
Luxury footwear is an industry that sells myth as much as material. A luxury shoe isn’t just a shoe; it’s a claim about taste, status, and belonging. Historically, those claims have often been policed—who gets to be “classic,” who gets to be “timeless,” who gets to sit at the table where price becomes a story.
Black-owned luxury footwear brands, then, operate with a double mandate: to make beautiful objects, and to expand the cultural vocabulary of what luxury is allowed to mean.
Brother Vellies: Craft, activism, and the politics of a product
Brother Vellies, founded by Aurora James, emerged with a clear intention: to foreground artisan production and connect luxury to a broader ethic of cultural preservation and opportunity. James launched the brand with the goal of promoting the work of African artisans, beginning with production rooted in South Africa and later expanding to other regions. The brand’s own positioning emphasizes Black ownership and a values-led approach to luxury.
In the broader cultural record, James is also known for extending fashion into organizing—most notably through the Fifteen Percent Pledge, a campaign urging major retailers to dedicate shelf space to Black-owned businesses. That activism matters here not as biography trivia but as a clue to how some Black-owned footwear brands have had to operate: not only designing product, but redesigning the market conditions that determine whether product survives.
Brother Vellies also belongs in the ethical conversation, because it treats provenance and production as part of the luxury narrative—craft not as aesthetic garnish, but as the center of the brand’s meaning.
Keeyahri: Sculptural confidence and the architecture of a heel
Keeyahri’s origin story reads like a familiar American pivot: founder Keya Martin, after years in corporate work, chose the risk of building a luxury label. Profiles describe her as the founder behind a brand oriented around confidence and statement-making design, with visibility that has included mainstream retail placements.
What makes Keeyahri notable in the luxury conversation is how it treats footwear as structure. The heel becomes an object with its own logic—curved, sculptural, intended to be recognized across a room. In a fashion landscape that often punishes Black designers with the faint praise of being “trend-driven,” Keeyahri insists on design as authorship: you can see the hand in the silhouette.
A high-profile collaboration with stylist Zerina Akers—framed as a meeting of two women of color creating with wearability in mind—further illustrates how Black-owned ecosystems work: partnerships that circulate attention and capital within community instead of relying solely on gatekeeper institutions.
Kendall Miles Designs: training, technique, and the long build
Kendall Miles Designs is explicit about a founder who treated shoemaking as a discipline. The brand’s own materials describe founder and design director Kendall Reynolds—Chicago-raised—pursuing formal accessories and footwear training at Ars Sutoria in Milan after initially teaching herself design.
That detail matters because footwear is among fashion’s most technical categories. A shoe is not forgiving. Fit, balance, materials, and manufacturing constraints form a tight box, and excellence often requires training, iteration, and a supply chain that respects the product. Reynolds’ story, as told in fashion press, underscores the time horizon behind “overnight success”—nearly a decade of building, with the brand framed as growth-minded and process-driven.
In a market that rewards hype, Kendall Miles represents something quieter: a commitment to craft credibility, the kind that allows a brand to last beyond a season.
Jessica Rich: The spectacle shoe and celebrity circulation
Jessica Rich is perhaps the clearest example of how a Black-owned footwear brand can become a pop-cultural object—heels that travel through celebrity imagery, red carpets, and the fast feedback loop of the internet. Rich’s brand materials frame her mission as representing Black footwear designers and pushing boundaries.
The broader public narrative around Rich emphasizes a signature aesthetic—often featuring transparent elements—and a business model that meets the market where it is: online, image-forward, driven by social proof. In the ecosystem of luxury, that approach functions like a wedge: instead of waiting for the traditional fashion establishment to “anoint” the brand, it builds demand through visibility and direct-to-consumer momentum.
Whatever one thinks of the celebrity engine, it is, in practice, one of the most reliable distribution systems for new brands. And Black designers have not always had equal access to it. Jessica Rich leveraged it anyway.
Salone Monet: “Nude” as a design problem with moral weight
Salone Monet built her brand around a simple, devastating observation: “nude” in shoes had long meant a single shade—one that presumed a default consumer. In a widely read profile, Monet describes the moment of realizing the gap while working in a shoe store, where corporate training advised always offering a nude heel despite the limited range available.
Her brand positioned “color-inclusive” nude shoes not as a niche but as a correction—an insistence that basic wardrobe tools should work for more bodies. That framing matters because it reframes what innovation looks like. Sometimes innovation is a new foam compound; sometimes it is naming an exclusion so ordinary it had gone unchallenged.
It’s also worth noting, transparently, that Salone Monet has publicly stated a decision to close the brand. In a Facebook story about Black entrepreneurship, closure is not failure as much as evidence: of capital constraints, of the brutal arithmetic of inventory businesses, of how hard it is to build a footwear supply chain without legacy backing. Even so, the cultural contribution remains. Salone Monet helped make the category’s blind spot visible—and that visibility tends not to disappear.
Athletic and sneaker brands: Performance, identity, and the fight for legitimacy
Footwear is one of the few fashion categories where performance claims can be objectively tested. The shoe either holds up under force, or it doesn’t. For Black-owned athletic and sneaker brands, the challenge is compounded by market dynamics: performance footwear is dominated by giants with R&D budgets, athlete contracts, and retail leverage. Breaking into that space requires either a new technical angle, a cultural wedge, or both.
Saysh: When an athlete designs for the life she actually lives
Saysh is inseparable from Allyson Felix’s public break with the traditional sponsorship model. Felix, one of the most decorated track athletes in history, built a company with the explicit experience of what it meant to be marketed to, negotiated with, and undervalued. In a major profile, Felix is described as bringing her competitive focus to leading Saysh.
The brand’s founding and positioning emphasize community and women-centered design, built by Felix alongside family leadership. In a landscape where women athletes have historically been offered less power and fewer ownership opportunities, Saysh reads like a structural intervention: not just a shoe line, but a new bargaining posture.
In other words, Saysh is not only about what’s on the foot; it’s about who owns the outcome.
BRANDBLACK: Hybrid thinking and the sneaker as product strategy
BRANDBLACK’s founder, David Raysse, is often described as an industry veteran, and the brand has been covered as a design-forward performance label. The label’s significance in this context is how it navigates the boundary between sport and style—treating sneaker design as a language with multiple audiences, from athletes to fashion consumers.
In sneaker culture, legitimacy is a currency. It comes from technical credibility, from design originality, from subcultural adoption. Brands like BRANDBLACK operate in the narrow corridor where all three can matter at once.
ROCKDEEP: Local roots, independent scale, and the long patience of building
ROCKDEEP’s story—founded by Rocky Parrish and described as Black-owned—sits closer to independent entrepreneurship than global hype machine. Local business coverage identifies Parrish as the founder, establishing ROCKDEEP in 2013 and situating operations in the Alexandria, Virginia area.
That regional anchoring matters. Not every brand becomes an empire; some become institutions in a community, proof that ownership can exist outside the coastal fashion-industrial complex. ROCKDEEP has also participated in collaborations that suggest a cultural dimension beyond product—connecting design to broader identity narratives.
KEEXS: A sneaker philosophy from the continent
KEEXS positions itself explicitly in relationship to Africa—framing itself as an innovative and social footwear brand, with early public fundraising describing a mission to pioneer innovation and design. Its social presence has described the company as “Africa’s first sneaker brand,” a claim that signals not only commerce but representation: the refusal to let “global sneaker culture” mean only Europe, the U.S., and Asia.
Whether one approaches KEEXS through product or through narrative, the larger point is this: Black-owned footwear is not only an American story. It is diasporic—moving between continents, manufacturing realities, and cultural priorities.
Ethical and sustainable: When the supply chain is part of the brand
Ethical footwear is easy to market and hard to execute. Materials, labor, wages, certifications, shipping—each adds complexity and cost. For Black-owned brands, the “ethical” promise also functions as an argument: that the industry’s hidden labor should not remain hidden, and that “value” should include who benefits from production.
soleRebels: Jobs, community, and an Ethiopian blueprint
SoleRebels, founded by Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, is frequently framed as a pioneering Ethiopian footwear company built to provide community-based jobs. The company’s own biography emphasizes a founding in 2005 aimed at creating dignified, well-paying work and building a global brand from local artisan talent.
What makes soleRebels particularly important in a story about Black-owned shoemakers is that it resists a common pattern: extraction. Rather than treating African labor as a cost center for brands headquartered elsewhere, soleRebels positions African production as the origin point of ownership and brand identity.
This is not simply sustainability as a vibe. It is sustainability as political economy: who controls the factory, who controls the story, who gets to scale.
Other notable brands: The loafer, the heel, and the middle spaces
Not all footwear brands fit neatly into “luxury” or “athletic” or “ethical.” Some are about category disruption—taking a classic silhouette and making it feel current, or building a label that moves between price points and audiences.
Blackstock & Weber: Making the loafer feel like a sneaker
Blackstock & Weber, founded by Chris Echevarria, has built a modern identity around a traditional men’s silhouette: the loafer. The brand describes itself as Brooklyn-based and led by Echevarria’s creative direction.
Echevarria has articulated the core thesis with unusual clarity: the loafer can be as versatile as a sneaker—something you reach for not as formal obligation but as daily choice. That idea is deceptively radical, because it challenges how American menswear has been sorted—sneaker as default, dress shoe as costume.
Mainstream fashion coverage has also framed Blackstock & Weber as a rising label whose collaborations signal legitimacy within the broader menswear ecosystem. The bigger point is how the brand translates cultural fluency into product: the loafer as streetwear, the classic as remix.
SybG (Sybille Guichard): Affordable luxury and the direct pitch to confidence
SybG by Sybille Guichard positions itself in language that feels like a conversation with the customer: purposeful walking, confidence, “affordable luxury,” a brand paradox that can be “simple but EXTRA.”
In the crowded middle of the market—where consumers want statement design without couture pricing—brands like SybG operate as both fashion and access. The cultural significance is not only aesthetic; it’s about who gets to participate in “looking like money” when money has historically been withheld.
What these founders are really building: Ownership infrastructure
A shoe is a hard object to build a business around. Fit problems create returns. Inventory eats cash. Manufacturing minimums punish small brands. And if you want to scale responsibly, you need relationships—pattern makers, factories, logistics, retail partners—each with their own margin demands.
Which means Black-owned shoemakers are often building two things at once:
A product line, with all the design, marketing, and distribution that implies.
An ownership infrastructure, capable of surviving the predictable shocks: late production, rising freight costs, retailer cancellations, platform algorithm changes, and the perpetual challenge of being “discovered” without being exploited.
This is why the historical context matters. When Black shoemakers were confined to the bench—repairing, producing, apprenticing without equal access to ownership—the ceiling was structural. The modern wave is not simply about representation on Instagram. It is about expanding the portion of the value chain that Black entrepreneurs control.
Consider how these brands map across the industry’s power centers:
Design authority: sculptural heels, signature silhouettes, new definitions of “nude.”
Technical credibility: performance language, athlete-led product logic, hybrid sneaker engineering.
Supply-chain ethics and origin: job creation as founding purpose, artisan production as luxury.
Category disruption: the loafer reimagined as everyday footwear.
Each is a strategy for moving from being “part of the story” to being the author of it.
The road ahead: What would make this movement durable
If the last decade has been about visibility—lists, features, social campaigns, the long-overdue excitement of naming Black-owned brands—then the next decade will be about durability. Not every brand should scale, and not every founder wants to. But the ecosystem can become sturdier if a few things happen:
More patient capital for inventory-heavy businesses. Footwear is expensive to make. Brands need financing that understands production cycles rather than punishing them. (The public record of brands closing underscores how common the cliff is.)
Stronger manufacturing access. The difference between a promising brand and a stable one is often factory relationships and minimums.
Retail that treats Black-owned brands as permanent, not seasonal. The Fifteen Percent Pledge captured the core problem: shelf space is power.
Narrative ownership. When a Black-owned shoe brand succeeds, the story can’t become “surprising.” It has to become normal—because Black shoemaking in America has never been rare. It has been under-credited.
The oldest part of this story is not the runway or the sneaker drop. It is the bench: the place where skill is learned, repeated, refined. The bench is also where history sits—quietly—waiting to be named.
Black-owned shoemakers are naming it now, pair by pair.