CLUB SANDWICH 68

AND IN THE GREEN CORNER

"Ah, but you do wear leather shoes!" is the rebuff many a vegetarian has to endure, day in, week out, month in...wear out. Well, not any more, for help is finally at hand. You too can join Paul and Linda McCartney and the steadily growing band of people who proudly don Vegetarian Shoes

            Take a close, a very close, look at the Abbey Road parody sleeve of Paul Is Live and you will see that Paul is wearing a pair of shoes. Last time, as we all know, he walked barefoot, and this time he's shod. The point is, they look like normal shoes, right? Of the variety you can get in any High Street shoe store anywhere in the world, right?
            Wrong, and wrong again. They may look like everyday shoes but they're actually very different. They're every bit as good as leather - better, it is said - and they do feel great. But they're not leather. No animal has died so that Paul McCartney could feel comfortable treading the zebra stripes of a pedestrian crossing in London NW8.
            Those are Vegetarian Shoes, manufactured by the world famous Doc Martens company and bought by Paul from a specialist store in Brighton, England.
            Vegetarian Shoes aren't made of leather and they aren't made of plastic or canvas either - the usual alternatives to dead animal skin. They've been developed from a blend of polyester and polyurethane to form a material richly deserving the adjective "quality". Dressed in canvas shoes your feet can get wet, in plastic shoes they can become - shall we say - malodorous; in Vegetarian Shoes they stay dry and don't smell because the material is water-resistant and, being porous, it "breathes".
            Just like leather, in other words. Only without the murder.
            Vegetarian Shoes is the name of a shop owned by an entrepreneurial chap called Robin Webb. A vegetarian for some years, Robin simply grew tired of travelling around Britain in search of non-leather, non-canvas, non-plastic shoes to wear, and decided to do something about it. "Sometimes I'd hear about a non-leather boot somewhere, find out where the shop was and, being not very rich, hitch-hike there, only find out that it was some other kind of plastic boot," he says.
            So, untrained, but with boundless enthusiasm, he set about making his own shoes out of old car tyres. "I used to scrabble around the tyre dumps to unearth the right ones," Robin says. "Unfortunately, modern steel radials are very difficult to cut, although third world countries do still use the old fashioned crossply tyres. So when I couldn't find the right tyres I experimented with anything else I could make soles from: crepe, cork and different types of recycled rubber."
            A chance conversation with a driver one day, when he was out thumbing a lift, pointed Robin in the direction of the synthetic mixture of polyester and polyurethane. So certain was he that it would work, he undertook a range of not altogether pleasant jobs in order to accrue the necessary capital and start a business. "Name any job and I've done it," Robin admits, reeling off a long list. (It's hard to believe he's only 27.)
            Since then, to cut a not-too-long story even shorter, business has taken off in a decidedly big way. "We're selling shoes like hot cakes at the moment," Robin says, metaphorically. "They're in such demand now, especially the vegetarian Doctor Martens. Everybody's screaming for those. I've had to take on three extra staff."
            But just how good does he consider his wonder material?
            "Quite simply, we've got the best material and the best shoemaking around," he answers, unabashedly. "It's stronger than leather, yet softer, it's also scuff and abrasion resistant, it can be wiped clean, you don't need to polish it and yet it won't break down, dry out or crack. The material is inert - it'll stay soft and supple. We've not had one pair returned with a crack."
            Drawbacks? "Yes, our biggest problem is that we only really sell to vegetarians, and even then only to some vegetarians because a lot of them aren't bothered about what shoes they wear. Also, I think, our name, Vegetarian Shoes, puts people off, although it was easily the most obvious one to go for. It's really hard to convince meateaters to change to non-leather shoes because most people equate leather with quality. Okay, leather is good quality...it's just that this new material is even better."
            If you're looking for less biased endorsement just ask the McCartney family. They're regular customers. "Yes, they order shoes from us," confirms Robin. "We send them a bunch of shoes as and when they want them. Paul is especially supportive - he recently got all the chiefs at EMI in Germany to wear them for a photocall. We suddenly received a fax asking us to courier over eight pairs of shoes by the next day. And there was a picture story in the German newspaper with all these guys wearing the shoes - the shoes were the focus of the piece. It was a great boost for us. And now Paul's wearing them on the cover of his new album."
            Vegetarian Shoes is clearly an answer that many, like the McCartneys, have been seeking for a very long time. They must be worth considering next time you need to buy new footwear.

            Vegetarian Shoes, 12 Gardner Street, Brighton BN1 1UP England. Telephone 0273 691913.