We were lucky to catch up with Dustin Lyons recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Dustin, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
A sense of purpose can be a tricky thing to hold on to. Life is a mixed bag. Things shift. Do your laundry, pay your bills, get to work. There’s got to be an overarching spirit of wonder and excitement that fuels you. To know what you’re after, to achieve a sense of direction, you have to be very self-aware, you have to know what holds your attention and gives you a feeling of belonging and peace more than another thing. We generally know what this on a recreational level, and passionately; but, when it comes to vocation, a vehicle for material survival, the tendency is to believe that no matter what it’ll be a grind that takes us away from what we’d rather do. Shoemaking and leatherworking has helped create a satisfying flow to my life. Like anything you do long enough, it has its tedium and less inspiring moments, but it also comes with a great deal of fulfillment in that it routinely challenges my skills and imagination. When I think of the purpose I find in the work I do the word ‘intimacy’ comes up. Shoemaking/Leatherwork affords me the freedom to live in a quiet mountainous backwater, a place I hike up into nearly everyday. It is the intimacy I am fortunate to enjoy with the natural world that has built my artistic sensibility, many of my designs are approximations or impressions of that experience. I return to the intimacy of my wood-fired workshop to build custom shoes for clients whose smiles I had met at an art fair or festival, whose feet I had held in my hands and casted with nylons and duck tape, whose eventual shoes or boots are made to the exact specifications they detailed. My purpose is to find salvation from the impersonal and ordinary, and I believe that is a function of curiosity and imagination. The work I do arouses both.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a shoemaker/leatherworker living in Joseph, Oregon. I have a small cabin and workshop on two uncombed acres at the foot of Chief Joseph Mountain. Established in 2011, Alkahest Leather is a one-man show specializing in custom-made leather footwear, hip & shoulder bags, and other accessories. Primarily a Pacific NW business, I travel to art fairs and various festivals throughout the region. Using full hides of bull, cow, and bison I build my products with a sewing machine and an array of hand-tools, incorporating antler, semi-precious stones, and various types of hardware. The footwear I build is entirely customized starting with a tape-casting of the customer’s foot. You choose your colors, buttons, soles, etc. As opposed to conventional, “lasted” footwear, which constrains the foot in a generic cavity, Alkahest footwear fits more like a second skin, like a moccasin–molding to the feet and allowing them to move and behave as they are meant to. You can do just about anything in these shoes. I can make you a pair appropriate for a dentist appointment, a hike up a mountain, or an “end-of-the-world” party! They can be re-soled, and with proper care they’ll keep your feet happy and head-turning for years to come. I have an ever-expanding stock of designs that tend toward images of the natural world. As well, I am always open to a custom design on a bag or a pair of boots. The ethos of my business is one that values quality, personal connection and collaborative creation. I make every effort to get it right–functional, durable, fashionable. It is my contention that life is lived most freely and brightly when one’s needs are simple and modest: coherent spaces, good friends, well-built, accommodating shoes.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I can be very detail oriented, a bit of a perfectionist when I’m convinced there’s reason to be. And I was passionately convinced that shoemaking was my escape vehicle from years of restaurant work. My eye for and will to precision has been a great asset in the process of developing products that sway the gaze of the public. Looking back, I can see how critical my immediate dedication to the craft was. Forwards and back, I learned the recipe that my teacher, William Shanor of Bonney & Wills School of Shoemaking, gave me. Over the course of these past 13 years, I’ve tweaked some things and built upon others, adding to the folk tradition of this particular style of footwear. I am not someone with an innate talent for tinkering or construction. But, I do have an active and robust imagination that thrives on color pairings and rendering images attractively in words; or, in the case at hand, applique and inlay on leather shoes and bags. If it flips the right switches in your gut and chest, you gotta throw yourself into it headlong, ride its perks, brook its pitfalls, master its language. You’ll only regret having not done it.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
My folks are both honest, hard-working individuals who instilled in my siblings and I a drive to always give it our best effort, and then to let the chips fall where they may. If the fall is not to your liking, you best get back on your feet, stoke up, and go again. Far and away, the most important and enduring gift I received from my forebears is the example of their grit and humor. Alongside this, I would note the effort my parents made in getting us kids out into the wilderness. There is no space that inspires the awe required to buck the dog-eat-dog trammels of conventional society quite like the untamed woods, creeks, and soaring peaks of the backcountry.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alkahestleather.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/alkahestleather
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/alkahestleather
Image Credits
All photos taken by Dustin Lyons
