Jay Adoni · Shoemaker, New York

01 · The Beginning

Nobody can copy where you started.

Jay Adoni came to the United States from Israel as a teenager. No family firm was waiting for him, no design school, no introductions. He went into shoes the only way open to him at the time. Onto the floor of somebody else’s business, learning the work from the people already doing it.

That is the part of his story a competitor cannot reproduce. Anyone can buy machinery. Anyone can hire a pattern maker. Nobody else arrived here as a teenager and learned this trade from the bottom of it.

He did not inherit a trade. He carried one.

A wall of wooden lasts in the factory — Lasts, kept for decades

Steel shanks racked and labelled by size — Racked by size, 37½ to 40½

Red leather cut by hand — Cutting, around the hide

A white boot pulled over the last — On the last

02 · Brooklyn, the 1970s

He opened his own factory when New York still made things.

By the 1970s he had his own shoe factory in Brooklyn. That was still an ordinary ambition then. The city had garment lofts and shoe floors and the people to staff them.

Then it went. The work moved overseas, the buildings became offices, and for six decades nobody opened a shoe factory in New York City again. He kept making shoes anyway.

An old Singer industrial sewing machine — The machines outlive the fashions

03 · The Return

The next shoe factory to open in this city was his family’s.

In 2012 the Adoni Factory Group opened the first full-production shoe factory New York City had seen in more than sixty years. The last one before it was his own, in Brooklyn.

They bought Klingbiel, a professional skating-boot maker out in Jamaica, Queens, and moved it into Midtown. Today the floor turns out around 220 pairs a day, bespoke and production, and makes custom boots for professional athletes, the American Olympian Sasha Cohen among them.

An insole stitched on the machine — West 38th Street, mid-build

One man’s factory closed the last chapter. His sons’ factory opened the next one.

Two addresses, forty years apart, and the same trade carried between them by one person.

04 · The Craft

What he actually knows how to do.

A shoe is roughly forty pieces and six disciplines. A full-production factory means all of them happen under one roof, by people who have done them for thirty years. This is the knowledge he carried over and spent a lifetime keeping alive.

PatternThe shoe taken apart and drawn flat. Everything after this is wrong if this is wrong.

CuttingLeather chosen and cut by hand, around the flaws in the hide.

UpperPieces stitched into the shape that will cover the foot.

LastingThe upper pulled over the last and held. This is where a shoe becomes a shoe.

BottomingSole and heel attached. The part that decides how long it lasts.

FinishingEdges, burnishing, hardware, and the last inspection before the box.

A pink suede bootie with leather straps and buckles — Suede and strapping, close up

Perforated leather and brass hardware — Brogueing and hardware

Rose gold pointed flats, worn — Finished, and worn

05 · His Name

For a manufacturer, your own label is the last thing you do.

He spent a career making shoes that carried other people’s names. The Jay Adoni line was built across Venice, Novo Hamburgo and New York. Three three places a manufacturer goes when the work has to be done by people who have done it before.

ItalyVenice

Leather and finishing, from a tradition that never stopped.

BrazilNovo Hamburgo

The country’s shoemaking capital, and its deepest bench of makers.

United StatesNew York

West 38th Street. His own floor, his own machines.

Jay Adoni footwear on a trade magazine page — The line, in the trade press

The first new shoe factory in New York City since Jay Adoni opened his first factory in Brooklyn in the 1970s.
Inc. · on the Adoni Group

06 · The Work

Sixty years of it, and the photographs he kept.

Samples, showrooms, the expo floor, shipping days. Not a lookbook. A working record.

Shelves of heels in the showroom — The showroom wall

Gladiator heels on a bench — Samples on the bench

Suede wedge boots — Suede, cut and lasted

Factory staff with finished boxes — A shipping day

The FFANY New York Shoe Expo entrance — New York Shoe Expo

A crowded showroom in market week — Market week

A buyer handling a fringed shoe in the showroom — A buyer, deciding

An opening event with press and cameras — An opening, with the press

07 · What Follows

He wanted to teach it before it disappeared.

Jay talked about opening schools to teach shoemaking, because the people who knew how to do it were not being replaced. That is now a school in the Garment District, on the same floor as the work.

Students take a shoe apart, make the pattern, choose the leather, cut, assemble, attach the bottom, and leave with a finished pair. Their teachers have more than thirty years each. His sons run the group and the design. Both of them learned it standing next to him.

Jensen AdoniPresident of the group. Co-founded Modern Vice with his brother.

Jordan AdoniDesign and marketing. Bespoke work has included a collection for Lenny Kravitz.

The AcademyShoemaking taught in the Garment District, a few days at the bench.

Four labelsJay Adoni · Klingbiel · Modern Vice · GiraffeWalk

He spent his life making shoes. Now he is teaching people how.

08 · Find Him

Third floor, West 38th Street.

Sixty years of it, and he still walks the floor. The machines are running, the school is on the same floor as the work, and the name on the insole is his.

The Factory

247 West 38th Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10018

The Group

The Adoni Group
Jay Adoni, founder
Jensen Adoni, President

On One Floor

Bespoke · Private label
Skating boots · Teaching