The slipper club
by LIZ JOHNSTONE | portrait by PIOTR REDLIŃSKI
The story of Mickey Ashmore’s Turkish slippers begins with romance. A few years after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania’s business school, the Dallas native went to Istanbul for a six-month work program. Ashmore, now 28, learned Turkish and stayed two years. He also dated a woman from a town where a small handful of craftspeople still made traditional Turkish leather slippers. “She gave me a pair,” Ashmore says. “She had grown up wearing them and her grandparents had all worn them. … I just loved them. I wore them all the time. And the irony was, Turks don’t really wear the traditional shoes there anymore.”
Ashmore eventually returned to New York, where he took a job with a hedge-fund company. Meanwhile, he wore out his slippers’ leather soles. He wanted a new pair, but with modifications. So, in January 2013, Ashmore found one of the last remaining workshops and asked for a custom slipper with a shorter back and a rubber sole. He decided to call them Sabahs, Turkish for “morning.” He then imported 100 pairs that June and threw a party at his town house to showcase them. He sold out. He ordered 200 more and started Sabah Sundays, an open social. Come August of that year, he quit his job to focus on his new venture.
Hand-stitched of leather, paired with that modern rubber sole, Sabahs are made in Gaziantep in southern Turkey by local craftsmen, each of whom has a story. One fled the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo; another is a fifth-generation shoemaker. Their skill is unparalleled. “The hardest part is the way the shoe is created,” Ashmore says. “It requires a lot of skill and training, and it’s quite hard on your hand. No one else can make them.”
You can buy Sabahs, which are priced at $190 plus shipping and available in a variety of colors, one of three ways: an appointment at the Sabah House in New York City, or via phone or email (646-864-2371, orders@sabah.am). Ashmore answers the emails himself, and he makes a point to introduce the craftsmen behind each part of the shoe. In lieu of e-commerce, Ashmore travels, bringing Sabah Sunday parties to places such as Los Angeles and, in coming months, Austin and Dallas. Sabahs are bought, not sold, he says, which allows him to focus on hospitality, making friends out of customers and vice versa. After all, the Sabah House is actually his house, too. And he’d never invite a friend to visit without offering something to drink.
LIZ JOHNSTONE is a Dallas writer, editor and theater critic. She is the former managing editor of D magazine.
The post How Dallas native Mickey Ashmore found a shoe — and a business — that fits appeared first on FD.
