TGIF POU!
After working in one of the British Virgin Islands’ biggest law firms for five years, Athina Jack of Tortola took a bold step, moved to New York and has been crafting her signature-style shoes among some of the world’s most prestigious designers ever since.
Now known throughout the fashion world as Stella Maze, featuring the Stella Hues collection with their aquamarine soles to reflect the Caribbean Sea, she has showcased her footwear before large audiences at New York Fashion Week for the past two years.
Jack’s trek into the shoe design industry began when Melissa Evins invited her to intern alongside her brother Reed Evins at the Reed Evins Design Studio. She also worked with shoe designer David Aaron.
“I could sketch and he’d ask me how I designed some of my clothes and how I cut them,” Jack, whose mother was a dress designer, recalled. “One day he said, ‘I like the idea that you have for your T-shirts and I’d like you to come to the studio and help me out with some creative ideas of how I can get the young generation to shoes.’ At the time, he was working for the Madison Group and they were making shoes like Alphani, Jessica Simpson, BeBe, Vince Camuto, BCB, among others, so he had me working with him revamping some of those brands as they were losing customers, the hip crowd and up-and- coming young people.”
Aaron is an instructor for the Astoria School in England and Italy and has classes in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“I basically learn from a master whose family has been 70 years in the footwear business,” Jack said. “He introduced me to his cousins, his friends, the entire footwear circle.”
Her meteoric rise within the industry began in 2011 with her lawyer who is one of her friends, her fiancé and people in the industry who hang out together and she was invited to the Family Footwear Association of New York show. There she met Michael Costello — one of the most sought-after designers — who had just come off the show “Project Runway.”
“I just walked up to him and we spoke, took his number and then two weeks later I called him,” she remembered. “I proposed since he was going to do his first official show in New York and at the time, the theme went together with the products I was coming out with — my all black, bold and glamorous look and that was the idea he was coming out with so it only made sense for us to work together. That was his first show and my first show in 2014. I also did L.A. Fashion Week with him and my shoes were featured.”
In February 2016, she had her own show, with a Stella in Wonderland theme, at the Spring New York Fashion week, featuring her brand under blue lights and a Pirates of the Caribbean look. “I basically took them on a journey to the Caribbean, through my designs and the appetizers we had,” she noted. “I even invited pastry chef Simone Ward from Tortola. She did the pastries to coordinate with the step into the blue theme.”
So far, she has created 15 designs and has been getting positive feedback. Her line includes boots, shoes, sandals and slippers.
“As much as they are expensive, I try my best to get the highest quality materials,” Jack said. “They are handmade in a small town in Milan, Italy. The precision that they take to make the shoes is 100 percent authentic. I have my own cushion technology inside my shoes, which has a high definition comfort cushion, so that a woman can wear her shoes for over five hours and they won’t hurt her feet. That’s my secret besides the blue bottoms. Basically, wearing my shoes is like you’re walking on water.”