BURST
Vancouver shoemaker Amy Slosky was just starting to get back on her feet after being hit hard by COVID-19 when she lost everything in the fire in the old Dayton Boots building last month.
Slosky, who works for Wohlford & Co, formerly Dayton Boots, as a boot-maker to pay the bills, was renting a small studio on the second floor of the historic building for her own business: Amy Slosky Handmade Shoes.
But the building burned down on April 23, damaging two other businesses and torching all of her specialized equipment, including hard-to-find supplies like her sewing machine and leather she brought back from Italy where she studied her craft.
Along with other shoemakers and artists on the second floor, she was left with nothing, her equipment and materials scorched beyond repair, including some of her client’s favourite shoes that she was fixing at the time.
“So the roof caught fire and then collapsed and came down onto the second floor. So everything is ruined — all of my machines, like my beautiful sewing machine that’s been with me from the beginning,” said Slosky on Wednesday.
She said her equipment was used because she couldn’t afford new starting out, but it still would add up to about $42,000. She said if she had to buy new it would be close to twice that amount, and it will be difficult to even find some of the hand tools that were lost.
“You can’t just go to a supplier locally or go to the Home Depot. That’s not an option. A lot of these are specialized tools that just are very hard to replace.”
Slosky said she’s grateful to still have a job at Wohlford, where they’re spending their days trying to salvage as much of the historical inventory as possible.
“There’s 75 years of history in the basement we are trying to save,” she said. “But emotionally, it’s super-hard for me because my studio has been devastated, but I’m still there in the building trying to salvage somebody else’s work.”
While studying in Florence, Slosky fell in love with a very traditional way of hand-making leather shoes, particularly men’s Oxfords or Derby loafers with a baroque design.
“It’s about bringing back that traditional classic footwear that’s not trend-based, lasts forever, and is fully repairable,” she said. “The kind of thing you bring into your wardrobe and they become your favourite pieces, and you just kind of love to wear them because of your connection to creating them with me.”
She had to temporarily suspend her business after the pandemic when people stopped buying footwear to go out in or wear to the office.
Following that, inflation and cost-of-living pressures contributed to her going back to work full-time at the boot factory. But things were starting to look up when the fire hit and she was starting to get orders for her own business again and doing repairs.
“It was a really hard thing to have to call my clients and say, ‘I’m sorry I can’t return your shoes that you love so much.’ And then promise them that once I get back on my feet, that there will be more beautiful shoes in their future, that I will repay the loss.”
A friend of Slosky’s has set up a GoFundMe to help with her losses. Slosky told Postmedia News that she hopes to use the donations to replace the equipment and remake the shoes for her clients.
Meantime, Vancouver police continue to investigate the blaze as suspicious.
The fire burned for several hours. Three businesses were heavily damaged in the blaze, including Wohlford & Co. The Indian Chef’s Kitchen restaurant and the Windsor Meats butcher shop, which share a building at 2270 and 2276 East Hastings St., were also damaged in the flames.