Boots for Sir Lawrence by Mickey McGowan, The Apple Cobbler 1971

ARCHIVAL - Mickey McGowan a.k.a. The Apple Cobbler
Marin County, California

In the Late 1960s, California artist Mickey McGowen was looking for an alternative to leather and began to apply leatherwork techniques to canvas and other kinds of cloth, with a vision “to give color to people’s feet”. Between 1968 and 1976 McGowan set up a shop in Mill Valley with Marin-based musicians representing a significant part of his client base. Drummers in particular would order their shoes with flat soles, which were particularly flexible and probably allowed them to easily work the drum pedals.

For this exhibit, we were able to include these shoes, by our top-pick dream shoemaker, The Apple Cobbler- aka Mickey McGowan. These two incredible lace-up booties are made from vegan materials, as was all of his work: made up of colorful quilted velvet, satin and embroidered patchwork uppers and sitting atop rainbow-layered eva foam soles, they are total hippy-dippy dream shoes.

Rachel Corry first came across his work in the book ‘Native Funk and Flash’ and was forever changed, realizing she could employ recycled fabrics, paint, and generally lose whatever perfectionism that might have been expected and just be free to make fun colorful zany shoes! What an important lesson. Simply seeing his work is like a refreshing dose of LSD.

Found and provided via the deep rock and roll connections of inspirational vintage shop @vacationsf The original owner of these custom boots are from none other than Sir Lawrence, a long time employee of Bill Graham, and his wife Genevieve.

Many thanks to Kristin Klein from Vacation in San Francisco for sharing these historical wonders.

MATERIAL: Quilted fabric scraps, layered colored rubber soles

SIZE: Shoe Size-Men’s: 11 1/2