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Germaine Shoes


Guillaume Collanges

In a courtyard in Paris’s Belleville, tucked away behind an apartment building, Germaine’s workshop is a vestige of the activity that thrived in the neighborhood from the end of the War through the 1980s. “Belleville was shoemaking” Germaine recalls fondly. Other parts of Paris were home to other trades – it tended to be ironworkers in Charonne, foundries at Gambetta, cabinetmakers at Bastille, and so on. Paris’s popu quarters were hives of activity. Germaine’s shop specializes in fabric shoes. There’s no lack of customers; many of them are future brides. And also couturiers, who have special models made for haute couture shows. They’re all from the high-toned sections of the city… far from the world of the workshop and its neighborhood, with its smells of glue and leather.



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