| This is the story of a business with a beautiful product that has never been so in demand. It is bought in vast quantities by women between the ages of 13 and 40 – maybe 45. The business is British, with no franchises and, in this customer’s eyes, no plausible imitators. Though the company has no monopoly on its product, it exports to virtually every country in the Western world. The product is expensive and its life span short: it is the toe – or pointe – shoe produced in Freed of London’s factory. |
| In 1928, Frederick Freed, his wife and one helper left Gamba’s, then the leading English toe-shoe factory, to begin one of the most successful toe-shoe businesses in history. In the period since Freed and his assistant started sewing shoes in the basement of what is now the retail shop at St. Martin’s Lane, a short walk from Trafalgar Square, the popularity of ballet has soared. Today there are more professional and student dancers than ever before, and thousands of them buy from Freed’s. Any dancer who spends as much as eight hours a day on her feet can tell you why: Freed’s peach-color toe shape
from the endless maturing and shaping a professional |
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| career brings about: the metatarsal has grown
wider and flatter; shoe is the lightest, slimmest, most elegant one available. It is also as comfortable as a tight, hard-toe shoe can be. To accommodate its enormous clientele, Freed’s factory has grown to 200 employees – and from two shoe “makers” to 25 – at three locations, with the largest in Hackney in London’s East End, and produces about a half-million pairs of toe shoes a year. Should Freed’s ever close down because of fire, strike or bombing, the ballet world would be under a cloud while hysterical, flat-footed ballerinas protested that they could were no other pointe shoe. |
| When the New York City Ballet was touring Europe last summer, our first stop was London. Many of the dancers wanted to visit the factory where our shoes are made. Their intention was to speak with their respective makers to discuss alterations; we are forever changing our requirements for both practical and esthetic reasons. Often a foot has simply changed various lumps, bumps, corns and calluses have grown, changed or been removed. Sometimes the heel of the shoe must be cut down to virtually nothing because of sore tendons, bone spurs |
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