source: virtualshoemuseum
Beth Levine (1914-2006) was an American fashion designer most known for her designs from the 1940s through the 1970s. Under the label of her husband Herbert Levine she was the best-known American women’s shoe designer from the 1950s to the early 1970s, and is still referred to as ‘The first Lady of American Shoes Design’. She designde shoes for three First Ladies, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson and Pat Nixon and her clientele also included movies stars like Bette Davis and musicians like Liza Minelli and Barbra Streisand.

Levines greatest influence is considered to be the re-introduction of boots to women’s fashion in the 1960’s and the popularization of the shoe style known as mules. When Nancy Sinatra wore Levine boots in publicity shots for the 1960’s hit song ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ demand for fashion boots leaped so much that Saks Fifth Avenue opened a special section its shoe department called Beth’s Bootery.
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source: nytimes
Mrs. Levine designed shoes for 30 years under the label Herbert Levine, named for her husband, and was known as America’s First Lady of Shoe Design because of her prominence in 20th-century fashion, and because her designs were worn by the American first ladies Lady Bird Johnson, Patricia Nixon and Jacqueline Kennedy.

She made shoes for Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl” and the white stiletto boots worn by Nancy Sinatra to sing “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.” Mrs. Levine had reignited a trend for boots in the 1960’s with her stretchy stocking styles and vinyl Go-Go boots, designed for dancing, (or walking all over you). When Ms. Sinatra released her anthem of women’s empowerment in 1966, she was shown in film made for early video jukeboxes wearing the style from Herbert Levine. The song increased the demand for fashion boots so much that Saks Fifth Avenue opened a corner in its shoe department called Beth’s Bootery.

“She was among the most influential shoe designers of the century,” said Elizabeth Semmelhack, the chief curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, who included Mrs. Levine in an exhibition this year called “Icons of Elegance.”

“In looking at 20th-century shoe design, she was in many ways a maverick mind,” Ms. Semmelhack said. “She saw the possibilities in all sorts of new materials and different ways of making a shoe.”

Mrs. Levine’s designs were known for their poetic whimsy: She lined a sandal with an insole of Astroturf and affixed a plastic flower to its toe straps, and she designed heels made of rolled leather or silver thread that looked like a spool.

One of Mrs. Levine’s most fanciful ideas, though it did not catch on, was the “upper-less shoe,” which was merely the sole of a high-heeled shoe with an adhesive insole that attached to the bottom of the foot. Her most outrageous designs — driving shoes made to look like race cars, elaborately carved wooden blocks that looked like birds in flight and evening shoes that looked like Aladdin’s lamp — were included in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1976, when she and her husband retired.

Beth Katz Levine was born on Dec. 31, 1914, in Patchogue, N.Y., the third of five children of Anna and Israel Katz, Lithuanian immigrants who operated a dairy farm. In the 1930’s, she moved to Manhattan and found work as a shoe model (her feet were size 4B), then worked her way up from a stylist to head designer for I. Miller.

After working for the Red Cross in World War II, she applied for a job in 1944 designing shoes for another shoe manufacturer. She met Herbert Levine, who was running that company, and married him three months later.

Two of Ms. Levine’s designs: a velvet mule with rolled leather heel, top, and stiletto-heeled pumps.
Mr. Levine died in 1991. Mrs. Levine is survived by a daughter, Anna Thomson-Wilson, of Manhattan.

Mrs. Levine once said: “My mother always thought a fine pair of shoes was a necessity. And my father dealt with horses and cows, so I knew about leather.”

In 1948, the couple started a business under the name Herbert Levine. Mrs. Levine wrote in a letter to the Bata Shoe Museum this year: “We wanted to create a shoemaking niche. We were making very pretty shoes that nobody needed, but everybody wanted.”

Mrs. Levine was given the Coty Award in 1967, for design innovations that overcame traditional boundaries of footwear. In the 1950’s, European designers had created a demand for mules, but they were difficult for women to walk in without crunching their toes to keep them on. Mrs. Levine’s solution was a strip of elastic that caused the heel of the mule to flip upward as a woman walked, maintaining the tension between the ball of the foot and the heel. She called her invention the Spring-O-Later.

“Clothes designers have gravity on their side,” Mrs. Levine said. “But shoe designers work upside down. Ideas are easy to come by. Getting them realized is something else.”

Although she worked closely with fashion designers to create shoes that would match their clothes, including a regular collaboration with James Galanos, Mrs. Levine was often a vocal critic of their work. Even after her retirement, she would call the designer Helmut Lang after his show to tell him what she liked and what she did not.

Ms. Bush once recalled introducing her aunt to Gianni Versace at a restaurant. “The first thing she said was: ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. Some of those clothes you make are really degrading to women,’ ’’ Ms. Bush said. “But by the end of the night, they were friends.”