Artist Highlight

Willy O'Neal began making shoes back in 1959 with a prominent shoe company in Maine. In 1985 he started a business focused on people to whom comfort and fit means everything. His wife Barb came on as a full-time shoemaker in 1993 after a 20-plus year nursing career.

 

Using top-quality leathers, hard-won experience, and a fine craftsman's pride, each pair of WillyMoc shoes is custom cut, hand lasted and handsewn. It takes years of dedicated skill to create a beautiful, handsewn shoe that is both functional and unique while being incredibly comfortable. Willy keeps the high art of shoemaking alive with his well-practiced ability to read the leather as he builds the customer's shoe a stitch at a time around the shoe last (a last is a model set-up to match the customer's foot).

 

Willy and Barb are among of the few remaining shoemakers in America still cutting and sewing shoes by hand, proudly preserving the craft learned more than 50 years ago. You will find Willy and Barb at fine, juried art shows around the country, displaying their line of quality handsewn shoes and taking orders, offering discriminating customers classic and original designs in boots, shoes, and slippers.