The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Sole Savers: Repairing and Restoring Old Shoes

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

When Lorena Agolli started learning how to make shoes, she knew she'd found her vocation. Working with her hands came naturally, and she now owns Sole Survivor - a cobbler shop in Toronto that restores and repairs dozens of pairs of shoes every day. Using generations-old equipment, she and her team are part of an old-school movement towards traditional methods and restoration that combines generational knowledge with new technology.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create

a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. When people come and visit the studio, they're like, what is this place? I've never seen this machinery. It invokes this excitement in myself and this curiosity, like, oh yeah, I get to do this every day. That's so cool.

And I work with these tools that are older than I am. My name is Lorena Goli, and I'm the owner and head cobbler of Sole Survivor, where we're currently at. I started apprenticing with a shoemaker about 12 years ago to, like, learn the trade of shoemaking, and then I fell into this all kind of by accident. I always had that inkling of wanting to have my own thing. I just never knew what it was.

My mom was very creative. She's an artist and a DIYer, so that world of just creating was so intriguing to me, but I never thought that I would actually make a career of it or even become a cobbler. So it was really like a happy accident that I found something that I fell so in love with and it really woke me up in a dark time. When something comes in, as simple as like removing salt stains of opera, that sometimes

I'm just like, yes, the shoe was terrible. It was like scratchy hard and I got it to be like soft and supple again and it's shiny you know sometimes that brings me that affection other times it's like a complete rebuild of the only thing that really remained was the upper is everything else is brand new for example you're bringing in a pair of sandals that are just like this like beige color they've gotten really dirty but then you know I'm convincing you like let's dye them chili red, you know? And like, just that kind of like sprucing up really,

like, I think is where we stand out, to just show people like what's doable. It's a very male-dominated trade, and I remember even going to a cobbler shop and sort of introducing myself and offering, just to be there to clean the space, I just wanted to be around that energy and the tools. And the gentleman shook my hand and, you know, I ended up touching my forearm

and kind of being like, you're not strong enough. So I don't think this is going to work. I had a difficult time, like, finding someone that was willing to take me on. And that's why when I took over Soul Survivor, it was so important for me to, like, give female and female-identifying people a chance to really be in a safe space that they can like find themselves like I did because I found that there weren't a lot of spaces out there like that. I'm still learning so really every day we come across problems or like

fun situations and we're just like how would we do it this time you know let's experiment and so it is a job where we're always learning and creating. So the team really does get better with time and us doing the work together. A lot of the tools that I use are like 50 to 100 years old. I'm like, wow, I can't believe like I'm using this tool that's been around for so long, probably used by all these other shoemakers and I'm still using it to like keep it up but at the same time like it's it's my job and I do it every day so you it's almost like you kind of take it for granted realizing what you're actually doing right you forget like your hands just did

that you know you just repair these 50 pairs of shoes and people get to like walk out in them and you're part of their life. So this is where all of the magic happens. These all here are our trusty sewing machines. We've got this bad boy here. It's called a walking foot. This usually is used for, you know, like quilting leather or like any type of thick materials, but we use this on a daily basis. And we always joke that when she's running you love to hear her purr because that's when you know she's working really well and then we've got our trusty post machine so this is a classic shoemakers machine this is where the uppers get sewn on we were actually gifted this one from another uh local shoemaker i think we are now the third generation of shoemakers that, you know, and

cobblers that are using this, which I always love the story behind machines like that. I always call this our dining table because this is where everything happens. The team just kind of sits around the table. Well, actually, we all stand most of the time where we, you know prep the shoes you know dye them do all of that over here we sort of have the hammering station this is usually the area that I'm in because I can handle a lot of the the heavy workload and and I love doing it and I'm a little bit faster at it to my staff and then this is my like prized possession hammer so this hammer was gifted to me from the previous owner of soul survivor it's dented up so much it's changed the curve of

hammering like thousands of souls for 11 years when we moved from kensington the handle the original handle broke and i was devastated i was like i i, I don't have a hammer and I love this hammer. And then my partner, who was dabbling around with some wood, lathed me this hammer post. And I love the hammer even more now. She hasn't been named, but maybe I should. We do love naming our machines here, which I will now introduce you to Jill Sander. We call her Jill Sander because she's a female and she sands. And she's a beast. She's really a workforce and has done a lot of, lot of repair. And she's quite loud, which we think suits our environment

because we are also very loud as females here. suits our environment because we are also very loud as females here this bad boy here is called a five in one uh the joke between many shoemakers and cobblers is that we all only know four things that it can do and no one can figure out what the fifth thing is but pretty much it can press soles it can skive and slice leather it can cut the souls and I guess I've only named three so I really don't know what the other two are but maybe mine's not an original five. It never resonated with me whenever people said like oh you work in a dying trade because one I'm working in it so I know for sure that like it's not dead trying to like revive things that have been around for so long,

I think that's what gives us a new breath of life, really, to, like, be able to continue in this trade. And especially with, like, everyone sharing their knowledge too now, whereas before I felt like, you know, old-time shoemakers or cobblers would sort of see you as a competition if you'd come and ask them questions. And now, you know, you have YouTube University. Like, everyone's sharing all the knowledge out there. Maybe a rejuvenating craft.

But I think it's ironic that our name is Soul Survivor because we're just really trying to, like, survive, like, the trade and your souls, pun intended. We saw an influx of, like, new customers coming in and people being really interested in like, oh, like these boots belong to my grandfather, you know, and they're still in good condition, I think. Can you help me make them feel more like my boots? And that we know. But now also, I think since then, everything's started to like move much faster and people do want things much

quicker. So we have to always kind of educate our customers of like, you know, we, what we do takes time and we can't rush it. We're not a factory. And if shoes have lasted for like three decades, they might even last for another three. They just need a sprucing up. Following brands that have been around for a very long time is so important. Like understanding like what their ethics are and how they're making their footwear is so important. We have customers sometimes texting us while they're shopping saying, can you look at this boot? Is this really like worth that money or is this constructed this way? And we tell them because we know that customer is going to come back then with that boot and get it repaired. Normally Goodyear welted shoes will use all leather uppers, leather soleing, and then just have like a rubber heel and maybe a rubber half

sole attached to it. And then you can see the stitches through the whole sole. And that's a good indicator that this boot was really made up to the standards. Well-made shoes usually started like $350 to $400. And that's a lot of money for some to like really invest in right away. But I always try to like let them know that if you buy that boot that costs that much, the repair that's coming in will only be probably like 40 to like 60 dollars. Whereas like you bring me a shoe that's 80 dollars, the repair might actually cost you 200. So these are some

of the brands that are extremely popular that we get on the cons and this particular brand is called Margiela and this style of shoe is called the Tabby. So it has, like, the tabby toe here. They're quite expensive, so it's really important that people, like, protect the soles on them, and that's where we come in, and we love working on them. People love seeing videos of how we, you know, prepare the soles and cut into them.

It really brings us joy to work on them. We get excited as a team when the really popular kind of styles come in. And then we have one customer who brings us these really cool Japanese sandals called getas. And he has a different variety of them, ones with two stills, one still. I love to show people that we can work on footwear that doesn't seem like your everyday type of shoe. Here's a good example of a shoe that, you know, someone really doesn't want to get rid of and they love and they've, as you can tell, they're well worn. And this is where we come in. All of this is rebuildable. I remember this customer sort of sharing the story that they've had these for like, you know, 10 plus years.

Can't let them go. Can't find another pair like this. They've really worn them in. And I think there is something to be said where sometimes for us, especially when we have the retail space, customers would come in and, you know, almost like unload their worries on us. You know, they would drop off their shoes, and then out of nowhere, it would be half an hour later, and it's been a therapy session. When our location was in Kensington Market,

we were surrounded by all these amazing vintage stores. And so now some of the owners still, like, bring us a lot of their repairs. And we had gotten these, like, vintage hiking boots. They were heavy as a brick, but made all out of leather. So the sole was like stacked leather. The uppers were leather. And I think they were like maybe about like 80 years old. Like very, very cool.

The metal was like just slightly rusted. The leather was a little bit brittle. So we really had to like give it like a gentle, you know, attention to it. But we thought it was fascinating that like people climbed in this and perhaps maybe even Mount Everest, but they were like, clumpy, like type of leather shoes. And now anyone that wants to hike, they want like have like light, breathable hiking shoes. And back then people really like, I don't want to say suffer through, but they really wore leather shoes for everything, you know, like Sunday best, but also then construction and whatnot.

And I'm always asked, like, what type of shoe would you make? Like, who are you as a designer? And I'm so baffled by that question. So I want to dabble in that world a little bit more, and I'm excited to see where it takes me and what I can share then with the world. I kind of want to break the barrier of having to be so traditional with the shoemaking aspect.

What repair has taught me is that like you don't have to always follow all the steps you've been taught. You can kind of not necessarily like cut corners, but you can use a different material or a different tool to get to that same outcome. So we've been in business for 11 years and like throughout the years, we've always like changed. You know, on the second year of owning the business, had two locations at one point we have had 13 staff but I think like sometimes when you grow really big you kind of miss the whole point of why you started something or why are you doing something and then of course with the pandemic happening and us having to again pivot as a business on like how can we sustain staying in this environment where we don't know what's happening, right?

We decided to move into a private studio, shared with my partner who's an artist, and it's been working out so well for us. It's brought a new perspective of slowing down, really paying attention to the work, and offering better quality. At the same time, I've started to think a little bit more creatively as well

of what I wanna do every day. So the slowing down has been really good for us as a team. And it's created more space and time that we can like focus on bigger and better projects. I'm very hopeful for the future. And I'm so excited for what's to come. We just recently became the authorized cobbler of a very large brand that I can't name as of yet because they'll announce it. And on top of that, we want to offer workshops with the team, which we're so excited for, and as well custom bespoke footwear of some sort. And perhaps even doing more collaborations

with other artists is something that we're really looking forward to. The Agenda with Steve Paikin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you. Thank you for supporting TVO's journalism.