Andy Martinez is the founder and sole producer of his bespoke shoe brand &e. He makes his signature shoe by hand-stitching sneaker bottoms — often Nike Air Force 1s — to cowboy boot shafts. What started as a one-off design for himself took off in 2018 when he got laid off from his job at a photography studio.
Mr. Martinez, 34, studied cartooning and film at Pratt Institute and found himself surrounded by fashionable people. Soon, they saw his shoes and wanted a pair of their own. His business snowballed online, and he has sold his shoes to celebrities, including the music artists SZA, Doechii, Don Toliver, Jessie Murph and Theophilus London, and the Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James.
“I’m wearing my shoes all the time, whether it’s to go to church or the grocery store — this is my business card,” said Mr. Martinez, who makes each shoe by hand and sells them for about $600 to $650. “Of course, cowboy boots have been there for ages. But I was really early on the cowboy trend that’s been happening now, with Beyoncé and Bad Bunny and Post Malone, and all these random country bars are opening in the city. So now there’s a market, and there’s a new customer that’s growing along with my product.”
Mr. Martinez’s family immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and then to Washington Heights in 1994. For the last six years, he has lived in a one-bedroom-plus-office apartment on the Upper West Side, decorated with artwork by friends. He shares the space with his longhair American cat, Chase.
Mr. Martinez recently spent a Wednesday with The New York Times to share his routine on design days.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
RUN WITH THE CREW I usually wake up before my alarm clock and go for a run in Central Park. Especially in the summertime, I give myself no excuse. If I can, I run with some friends from this running club called the WRU Crew, which stands for We Run Uptown. This is my moment to socialize, and it’s more of a productive socializing, before my friends head to work.
NO MILK, NO SUGAR There’s this Dominican breakfast that I always enjoy. I have to eat mangú after a run. It’s mashed plantains with red onion, sunny-side-up eggs and fried cheese. I go to Tropical Sensation on Amsterdam Avenue. Obviously, there’s Dominicans there, but TikTok done messed up the game — there’s nothing but Columbia students there now.
I love me a black cold brew — no milk, no sugar, just give me the gas. I go to either PlantShed or Birch Coffee. Those are my two home-base coffee shops.
FAKE BLOOD AND REAL PAINT I’ll hop on the 2 train to 42nd Street to grab sneakers from Foot Locker. Right now, the ones that I’m getting are the black Nike Air Force 1s.
Next, I’ll walk to Manhattan Wardrobe Supply on West 29th Street. It’s one of my favorite art stores of all time. It’s in an office building, so there’s a doorman, you sign in and you go to the eighth floor, and it’s this huge space. One side is for makeup and they have fake blood and all this movie stuff. And they also have all this foam for people who cosplay as super heroes. It’s really fun to just walk around and get inspired. They have a giant wall; it’s basically a giant rainbow of different pigments of sneaker paint and finishes and dyes and leather laces. But usually I go there to re-up on sneaker glue.
THRIFTING FOR BOOTS This whole strip of 26th Street is a thrift strip: Thrift NYC, 2nd Street, Buffalo Exchange. By the end of the block, it’s sensory overload. I’ll check out Flamingo’s Vintage Pound or Thrift NYC. The cool thing about this place is they have all these old cowboy boots for a set price of 50 or 40 bucks. So, if I’d like to make a pair for myself, just to test out, I grab them from there. If there’s a cool colorway in the stitching on a boot, I’ll grab them. It becomes more personal when you take used materials and turn it into something new. Most of the time, the bottom part of the boot is pretty beat up, but there’s some life still on the shaft.
But typically, I go for a name-brand boot like a Tony Lama, or Dan Post Milwaukee boots.
Before I go back uptown, I’ll grab a smoothie somewhere around there. I like strawberry, blueberry, peanut butter, banana.
LOVE AND LACES I go back home to work on my orders. Right now, I’m doing two black Dan Post Milwaukee boots for people that ordered them through my website. Both first-time customers. It’s really awesome that these are strangers, that they trust me.
To make an &e shoe, I X-Acto blade the top off the boot very carefully around the edges. I cut the seam off of the Air Forces, unstuff the entire shoe, force the collar, and I line up the existing stitching on the sneakers and the boots together. I glue it up with Barge cement glue. And once they’re dry, that’s where the hand-sewing comes in.
I sew all the way around. I glue down the tongue and stitch around the tongue as well. If I were to do it through a machine, needles pop, the machine actually scratches the surface, or the boot starts moving and you have a crooked top. It’s made to order and made with love, and you get a piece of me with every shoe.
OLD-SCHOOL RADIO While I work, I have this old radio, which is a very key piece of my apartment. My mom, when she passed away, we had a bunch of stuff in her old apartment, and she always used to have this radio playing throughout my entire childhood, on a religious radio station. It was always this white noise in the background. I’ll have on this oldies station, and I just have that scratchy radio playing in the background. It has made me turn off the TV and just do work. It almost becomes like, analog radio, analog stitching.
GRAB AND GO HOME At some point, I’ll take a break and grab dinner. I might get sushi from Ozen or a pizza from Mama’s Too!, and bring it back to my apartment. I really need to get better at cooking at home. I have a bachelor-style fridge where it’s just water, and every now and then I make a cold brew.
BEDTIME Sometimes I’ll watch documentaries about musicians or listen to an audiobook. I like Malcolm Gladwell’s books.
I like to go to bed early, so I can start the day off early, but the latest I stay up is like, 2 in the morning, which is not early.
The post How a Sneaker Designer Spends His Day Transforming Nikes appeared first on New York Times.
