Meet a master [women handbags]
It's a Monday morning, "catching-up day" at Occhicone Fine Leather Goods on Port Chester's North Main Street. Which is why the gold-handled front door stays locked as the village's downtown revs to life and a fretful female peers in and raps a distress signal on plate glass. Which is why a few women sneak in through the shop's back door to drop off shoes that can't wait another day for the healing hands of Occhicone.
It's family here, this business. They won't give you the boot even when they're closed.
At the front counter, Rosa and Anna Occhicone – mother and daughter – sort through and tag women's suede and leather boots. From a long Gucci box Rosa pulls a pair of sleekly stylish, calf-high brown boots. The sales slip reads "$1,295" – leather from a golden calf perhaps.
It's an alteration job for the Saks Fifth Avenue store up the road in Greenwich. "We have to make them an inch and a half bigger," Rosa says. Big bucks, big calves. Saks, Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors, they all send their high-end leather goods to this shop in Port Chester.
"They can run up to $10,000," Anna says. "It's crazy." Then there's the austerity-budget pair from TJ Maxx she lifts from the counter. They fix all kinds at Occhicone Fine Leather Goods.
Giuseppe Occhicone, the shop's 81-year-old master, emerges through a curtain from a crammed workroom where a dozen well-trained employees catch up on orders at sewing machines and work benches. He calls himself "leather crafter and cobbler." Giuseppe – after half a century in America, some call him "Joe''– turns well-tanned alligator hides and ostrich skins into handbags for which customers will pay a few or several thousand dollars. They pay handsomely too to walk in his shoes. You want a nice belt to hold up those Armani slacks, he'll make it for you.
"When I was 14, I made my first pair of custom shoes," he says. That was for a lady in Andretta, the village in Italy where Giuseppe was a fifth-generation cobbler in his family. "I learned the trade from my father and my father learned the trade from his father."
At 17, he left his defeated and war-ravaged country for Venezuela. He found a job in a shoe factory and studied accounting at night school, then balanced the company books with his handed-down leather trade. In 1960, he arrived in New York City.
It's family here, this business. They won't give you the boot even when they're closed.
At the front counter, Rosa and Anna Occhicone – mother and daughter – sort through and tag women's suede and leather boots. From a long Gucci box Rosa pulls a pair of sleekly stylish, calf-high brown boots. The sales slip reads "$1,295" – leather from a golden calf perhaps.
It's an alteration job for the Saks Fifth Avenue store up the road in Greenwich. "We have to make them an inch and a half bigger," Rosa says. Big bucks, big calves. Saks, Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors, they all send their high-end leather goods to this shop in Port Chester.
"They can run up to $10,000," Anna says. "It's crazy." Then there's the austerity-budget pair from TJ Maxx she lifts from the counter. They fix all kinds at Occhicone Fine Leather Goods.
Giuseppe Occhicone, the shop's 81-year-old master, emerges through a curtain from a crammed workroom where a dozen well-trained employees catch up on orders at sewing machines and work benches. He calls himself "leather crafter and cobbler." Giuseppe – after half a century in America, some call him "Joe''– turns well-tanned alligator hides and ostrich skins into handbags for which customers will pay a few or several thousand dollars. They pay handsomely too to walk in his shoes. You want a nice belt to hold up those Armani slacks, he'll make it for you.
"When I was 14, I made my first pair of custom shoes," he says. That was for a lady in Andretta, the village in Italy where Giuseppe was a fifth-generation cobbler in his family. "I learned the trade from my father and my father learned the trade from his father."
At 17, he left his defeated and war-ravaged country for Venezuela. He found a job in a shoe factory and studied accounting at night school, then balanced the company books with his handed-down leather trade. In 1960, he arrived in New York City.
2011-11-29 12:45
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