Anarchy Underfoot -- Fluevog's Shoes Are In Step With The Young And Hip

It's nearly 10 on a wintry Seattle morning and a tall guy in a '60s rock-'n'-roll haircut, a purple and gold striped jacket and a pair of red-and-blue shoes straight out of the Sunday funnies is peering into the John Fluevog shoe store on First Avenue.

Window shopping there is common. Pedestrians frequently stop to stare, some in bewilderment. From top to bottom the windows display shoes perhaps best described as rock-'n'-roll gothic or punk panache - styles for men and women in lavender, lime patent, combinations of primary colors and plenty of black. There are wooden-soled clogs and platform shoes with soles thick as bricks. There are women's pumps with needle-nosed toes and 5-inch heels flaring down to stumps so thick and square they could double as sofa feet. Morticia Addams would love them for elegant occasions.

But the guy in the colorful shoes isn't window shopping. He's waiting to get in; it's his store. This is John Fluevog himself, the man whose name is more frequently uttered than Nike or Reebok by a small but loyal clientele of young adults. He's driven down from his corporate headquarters in Vancouver, B.C., to visit his Seattle store, but he doesn't have keys.

The locked door seems not to concern him in the least. It is a surprise visit, after all. He's sure his young employees will be there soon. Besides, as president, owner (with his wife), designer and marketing wizard of The Fluevog empire, which includes stores in

Vancouver, Toronto, Boston and New York, he's got bigger things to think about. He's recently returned from Dusseldorf, Germany, for instance, where he attended a major footwear trade show. He already does a nice wholesale business in Germany, England, Scotland, Hong Kong and Australia, but thinks he can sell more. He envisions the day when his shoes could be shodding the feet of young fashion anarchists in Eastern Europe.

"It's quite exciting, really. We're selling around the world, and the wholesale will equal the retail side very rapidly," says Fluevog over coffee at a First Avenue cafe. "It's a niche market but one that I seem to understand. Kids who buy my shoes want that look that is slightly rebellious, that says, `I don't fit in and I don't want to.' Maybe it's because I had some rebellious streaks in me, but some conservative streaks, too."

That is more straight business talk than many of his customers would expect from a man they consider the Salvatore Ferragamo, the shoe artiste nonpareil, of the young and hip. But Fluevog is a down-to-earth guy, despite his wild shoes.

"I get letters from people who want to be shoe designers and it's hard for me to know how to respond. It's difficult because I don't consider myself a shoe designer. Basically I'm a merchant. It's about manufacturing a shoe and getting it to market. Designing? You do that on the back of a napkin."

Well, it's a bit more than that. His shoes are so unusual that he has them made in small factories in England that allow him to follow his muse and change styles frequently. Many of the boots and oxfords have Doc Marten-brand soles on them - the name Doc Marten refers to a patented sole, not a shoe brand - and therefore bear the Doc Marten label as well as Fluevog's. Others are made with Fluevog's recently introduced Angelic Sole, a thick, springy sole made of a natural tree latex that Fluevog says is more biodegradable than synthetic soles.

Prices range from $75 to $150 a pair. And though he won't disclose the company's total sales, he admits the company is growing rapidly.

Evidence of the label's fashion appeal is the pack of stylish celebrities who wear Fluevog shoes and the hip, young fashion designers who ask for customized colors for their runway shoes: Madonna, singers Paula Abdul and Lady Miss Keir, actress Sandra Bernhard and designers Betsey Johnson, Anna Sui and Christian Francis Roth. In the March issue of Vanity Fair, Fluevog shoes are included in a list of what's hip in trendy, youthful, downtown Manhattan - neighborhoods like The East Village.

"The only way to actually describe the shoes is to describe who buys them," says Fluevog. "They're mostly people who are 15 to 24 years old, and it's a music-connected thing. Whatever is happening and is on the cutting edge of music, the people who are into it wear my shoes."

Still, Jeffrey Calkins, a Seattle Fluevog shop salesman, says he can't always judge a customer by looks. "There are people who come in just to point and make fun," he said. "But then they try them on and buy them. And I've had customers from places you wouldn't expect. A woman from Tucson came in last week and bought five pairs."

Supermodel Linda Evangelista models sophisticated clothes in Barney's advertisements, but she apparently wears Fluevogs sometimes: On a recent visit to Seattle she bought a pair of clumpy-soled Mary Janes.

Linda Derschang, owner of Basic, a Broadway clothing store, says everyone who works at her store wears Fluevogs. Basic is the only shop in Seattle to which Fluevog wholesales.

Fluevog says he has little interest in the ups and downs of fashion. "I find fashion kind of hilarious. What's interesting is individualism and how people can express it." Nevertheless, he's an oracle of style. His shoes are often outrageously extreme versions of what shows up a few seasons later at stores ranging from Leeds to Nordstrom. For instance: Monster-footed platforms have been a standard at Fluevog for years; this season lots of stores are selling styles similar though more sedate.

Fluevog has no academic business training, but plenty of marketing savvy. He annually publishes a tongue-in-cheek handbook of "Fluevogism" that is a mail-order catalog and an in joke among "Fluevogers," as some loyal customers call themselves. This year it is a red, pocket-size booklet that bills itself as "Quotations from Chairman John Fluevog - a Fluevogist Manifesto and Shoe Catalog."

Its Cold War-era typeface and archaic black-and-white layout make it look as though the class wise guy ran it off on the school press while the faculty supervisor was lunching. Inside are such ersatz political pearls as "Class, class struggle and the importance of real class: . . . If the running dogs of fashion imperialism are to be defeated, all Fluevogers must develop themselves to the highest possible level of classiness." Comparisons to the Archie McPhee catalog are inevitable.

Fluevog, who writes much of the copy, says the booklets "are souvenirs. People take them home with them. They end up in places like Ohio and Denver." As a result, catalog sales are substantial.

A Vancouver native, Fluevog stumbled into the shoe business as a 21-year-old in 1970 when a friend suggested they start a shoe company. The pair had been employees at a staid men's shoe shop in Vancouver, and figured they could sell more interesting shoes. Fluevog's partner was Peter Fox, now a New York-based designer of high-fashion women's dress shoes. In 1980 Fluevog bought Fox out and took over the brunt of the design work, which had previously been Fox's specialty. Fluevog opened the Seattle store in 1986, his first outside Vancouver.

Back at the store, Fluevog fiddles with a light fixture and shoots the breeze with his employees, none of whom seem to be bustling around just because he's there. He says he likes to drop into his stores to take the pulse of his customers.

"Retail is an art, and I love it" he says. "In retailing you always have to deal with the future. I love working with customers on the floor and seeing that spark of excitement when they like something."