How one man in East L.A. ended up with the world's most famous feet

"In an overstuffed workshop in East L.A., Chris Francis reached out a heavily tattooed arm and pulled a single shoe box from one of the floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the walls. "Anjelica Huston," the shoemaker and artist said. "Let's see what's in here." Removing the top of the box, he revealed two carved wooden forms known as shoe lasts that cobblers use to make their wares."

"For the last three years, Francis has been surrounded by a sprawling archive of famous feet originally amassed by Pasquale Di Fabrizio, the late shoemaker to the stars. From the early '60s to the early 2000s, Di Fabrizio created custom footwear for the rich, famous and notorious out of his humble shoe shop on 3rd Street. The shoes went to his customers, but his voluminous collection includes shoe lasts, patterns, drawings, correspondences, leather samples and handwritten notes from thousands of clients."

Chris Francis maintains a sprawling archive of shoe-related materials in an East L.A. workshop. The collection originated with Pasquale Di Fabrizio, a shoemaker who made custom footwear for celebrities from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. The archive contains shoe lasts, patterns, drawings, correspondences, leather samples and handwritten notes stored in marked cardboard boxes. Many boxes bear celebrity names such as Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro, Sarah Jessica Parker and Nancy Sinatra. Francis treasures the boxes and examines their contents regularly. Francis never met Di Fabrizio, who died in 2008, but in 2022 Francis traded two pairs of his sculptural shoes to acquire part of the collection.

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