The Shoe College NOLA
The Shoe College
ABOUT

Uptown, New Orleans

THE HISTORY

THE FOUNDER

Tamera Lyndsay's CV:
Art & Independent Designer/Manufacturer Background
Late Seventies/Early Eighties:
-Assistant to Anne VonBahrenberg, retired curator, Grand Central Gallery.
-First sold out art show, mixed media at age 19
(Curated by Rubellio Maxwell, Hard Art, 16th st. Wash., DC)
Early-Eighties:
-Factory production assistant, Terra Firma, NYC (ladies belts/accessories)
Mid-Eighties: 
-Assistant to artists Lyn Lapointe and Martha Fleming in Montreal (petit filles firehouse installation).
Mid-Late-Eighties:
-Assistant to Loren MacIver (first female painter to be included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection).
Mid-Late Eighties:
-Emerged from the High Design movement NYC with millinery, accessories, table top, and leatherbound journals and albums.
-Collaborations with Barbara Klar Clear Metals NYC, co-operated Clear Metals with Barbara at Clear Metals original E. 7th St. location.
-Collaborations with Clodagh for Den Su's collosal boardroom in Tokyo,
-Collaborations with Glen Yank for Vogue magazine editorials.
-Work featured on covers of NY Times Magazine, Accessories, Seventeen,
Late Eighties/Early Nineties:
-Started up in-house production of accessories
-Represented by Yvette Fry Showroom, 5th Avenue, internationally, in her first collection of designers.
-Apprenticeship in Arizona with Paul Bond's right hand man, Bob Mclean (western boots)
Mid-Nineties-Millenium:
-Moved operations to Northern Az. to increase production ability and better access the West Coast Markets.
-Represented by Fine Lines internationally in Los Angeles, under the Wilma Accessories brand.
Millenium to 2016:
-Founded The Shoe College, Université des Chaussures in Northern Arizona.
2010-2016 Conducted extension courses in New Orleans (heels)
2016-Present: Currently conducting courses and programs in New Orleans
Future: Keep your eyes open & put your best foot forward!
Founded at the dawn of the millenium, Tamera Lyndsay, a master shoe and accessories designer from NYC founded The Shoe College in Northern Az. as a supplement to college and university design programs, most of whom did not have a shoe lab at the time.

Programs are 100% lab based, hands-on, and conducted in a private shoe lab.
Students learn fast track what they need to take their own shoe goals to the next level.

The idea was/is simple. Fill the needed gap that the off-shoring of US manufacturing produced. What gap, you ask? The connection between designers and their product, the actual physical shoes. Designers were expected to "know their stuff" without having any real access to their product and process until the factory produced something. Prototype and sample making quickly migrated from the designer's hands to the factory's hands in China and Pacific Rim. Even Italian shoes were starting to be 'assembled in Italy' rather than 'made in Italy'.

We didn't seem to think much about the brain drain and migration of support industries that off-shore outsourcing produced.

Tamera aimed to fix that by reconnecting designers first-hand with their products and processes, one maker at a time.
TESTIMONIALS:
  2. Kayla Heersink, He-He Shoes
    So happy with the results of my time in NOLA with @TheShoeCollege making these shoes! Thanks, Tamera