Walking into John Fluevog’s new glassed store in Vancouver’s Gastown resembles much like walking into a cathedral. The former parking lot, now atrium, of 65 Water Street is sandwiched between two brick historical buildings, a nod to Fluevog’s inception in the area back in the early 70’s.
If his glass store is a crystal cathedral with its heavenly arched ceiling, than John’s shoes are its parishioners varying in shape, size and gender. Slabs of old oak from Cloverdale, British Columbia sit upon large sections of pipe from the Alaskan Pipeline, acting like pews for John’s spring 2008 collection. Above the assortment of Fluevogs lies a choir loft like mezzanine which houses the design studio for all things prophetically Fluevog.
His website’s small print on the main page reads, “…We are the cure for Fashion Spam, Designer footwear nonpareil, Champion of independent style, And even Open Source Footwear – John’s influence is everywhere. Your funky shoes from Fluevog cast Angelic love (on Earth, dude, as it is Above). Wear boring shoes? No ‘Voggin’ way! So, Don’t Delay – Fluevog Today!”
The Gastown location is Fluevog’s second store. His first can be found in the hub of Vancouver’s Granville Street entertainment district. But why a new store? “Because I’m expanding internationally…I wanted a place that had a vision for something that when people came here from other countries, other places, wholesalers from the US, would come here and go ‘oh this is what John Fluevog is about’ and it would make sense for them. So it’s a branding exercise,” says John.
Evoking uber-cool, John is dressed in black jeans, wears a grey jacket and coordinating black and grey man scarf. On his feet he wears his own designs.
While he has nothing on the horizon in Canada, Fluevog does have his sites set on countries like Japan, Singapore and Beijing. This makes up the 10th store for the Vancouver born designer. When asked “why shoes?’” John’s answer is refreshingly real and anything but artistic rhetoric. “I’ve only done shoes because this was in front of me. I started doing it, like a lot of things, being in the retail business is not particularly easy, and I wanted product that was my own and I happened to be doing shoes, not because it was what I wanted to do, it’s just because I was doing it.”
John shares that he didn’t have any formal art training nor did he know he could draw until his mid 30’s. Call him a creative late bloomer John has poured himself into his art saying, “I’ve tended to be very lone wolfy about what I do. I do everything myself which may or may not be in retrospect a good plan but it gave me that sense satisfaction that I, I felt I needed to for some reason, to do everything myself. It was me and I did it. My name was on my product, I did it.”
But where does he get his ideas? “You just have them…they just are,” says the auburn haired Fluevog. “I think probably the best expression is I see things that aren’t there. Like I’ll look at someone’s shoe or I’ll look at something and I won’t see it completely…I only see what I want to see. And my mind shows me something that is actually not there but I see it, something like that.”
He admits to dreaming about shoe designs in his sleep saying, “colours, stitches, backs. I’ll wake up, I’ll dream about a back perfectly and I’ll draw it go back to sleep and boom, I’ll see the side of it, I’ll wake up draw it, fall asleep and boom…”
With this new store added to the Fluevog Empire, John, in spite of his achievements, has had to relinquish a bit of his control.
“I have a design team. There are three other people that are doing the designs, colourings, and some of the renderings, and they’re liaisons with the factories and all that kind of stuff.”
But giving up the control can’t be easy. Says John, “Yes it is hard. Very few people are actually genuinely creative. They’ll come to me with something they’ve seen some place before but for them to go out of the box and think of something completely different than they’ve seen before, it’s a different story. I want to be original; I’ve been that way all my life.”
His originality in his designs is what has made his empire distinct and his clientele are hipsters and fashionistas that set the trend for urban style.
“It’s not an easy road to hoe all the time because in the fashion industry most people want to look like everybody else. They want to fit into whatever subculture or group that they are trying to look like. So when you are doing something off of that the people that are buying need to have a strong vibe themselves, and the strength of character to be doing it on their own, with it not being in a fashion magazine.”
Evidence of the creativity of Fluevog wearers can be seen on the company’s webpage in what are called Flueshots. This online photo gallery features submitted photos of Fluevogians wearing their shoes around the world. The website which gets upwards of over 10 million hits a month – no lie – also has a section called Open Source Footwear where fans can submit their own shoe design in the hopes of being chosen as part of a Fluevog collection.
Spread among metal tables and workstations in the design studio the team is currently designing the 2009 collection. When asked what verb best describes the collection John says, “Handsomely elegant.”
“I think the art of being in business is a very artistic thing. I think that how we communicate with each other is an artistic expression, it’s our articulation of words, our communication and basically what’s been fun for me and my career is I have been able to take the things that I do and spread them out across the country so more people have known what I do that’s all.
I look back on it and people know my name all over North America and I can’t say that I went out consciously to do that, I set out to make some cool interesting shoes that I liked and that people would like… I hoped and the only way to do it was to open up more stores.”
The armchair philosopher / artist ruminates on his success. “Success is when we as ourselves integrate ourselves up wholly into the environment around us. To be real. To be genuine. And being real is not easy –‘what is being real?’ We all want to make things up, well you don’t need to make anything up because we who actually are, is very cool, all of us and I think that’s success. Success is having the freedom to be who we are.”
In the distance a cute hipster couple is seen. As her boyfriend watches, the rockabilly styled woman tries on a high-heeled version of a Mary Jane but with all the attitude of a Fluevog. When asked if he knows which one she’ll buy he says, “yes” – he always knows.
John is a “sole” survivor. Designing unique shoes throughout the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today John has had to adapt to the market, the times and relinquish some of his control…not an easy thing to do for this artist. Giving up the reigns is still hard. But now with help Fluevog is adding, besides stores, even more inspirations to his line accessories like belt buckles, handbags, laptop bags and even…chesterfields.
On the future? “I would like to do more art, I would like to start drawing things more…and that those pieces become pieces on their own apart from footwear.
All things considered Mr. Fluevog…you’re well on your way.
