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Instagram asking to trade raw materials for a pair of custom shoes.
Pudelko says she lets her intuition guide her when she’s looking for materials. “It’s so much more fun than going to a fabric store and just picking, you know? And then you see someone else making something else from the same fabric. I don’t want that.”
Using second-hand materials adds depth to her work and makes the whole creative process more interesting, she explains. While working through the COVID-19 pandemic, she realized how important that was to her.
“What I learned recently is that I’m only doing this for myself,” she notes, adding
that she feels lucky to not have to answer to investors or other outside pressures. “I’m just taking my joy where I can find it and really doing it the way that has meaning to me,
and to the people who wear my brand.” Once she settles on a design she’s happy with, she adapts it for everyone else.
When I ask how she wants people to feel when they wear a pair of Western Affair shoes, she says she wants “everyone to feel special and confident and however they
want to show themselves.”
She’s well aware that her shoes are made to stand out, and perhaps even prompt conversations with strangers—something that might actually prove helpful as we get ready to step into a post-pandemic world.
“That’s one message I always get: ‘Oh my god! I wore your shoes last night and everyone was stopping me!’ I love that,” Pudelko says. “If you’re shy, just wear a pair of my shoes and you’ll make friends so fast because you’ll just be talking to everyone.”
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