Herbert Levine (company)

Founded	1948
Founder	Herbert and Beth Levine
Headquarters	New York
Products	Shoes
Website	www.herbert-levine.com

Herbert Levine is an American luxury shoe label founded in 1948 by Herbert Levine and his wife Beth.

The Herbert Levine label was named after former-journalist Herbert. His wife, Beth, was the primary shoe designer of the label. She designed the footwear while Herbert handled the factory management, sales and marketing.

Herbert Levine, Inc. established its first factory on 31 West 31st Street in New York on January 1949. The factory started with a production of 400 pair of shoes a week to reach 200 employees producing 5,000 pair of shoes a week in 1954. In 1975, Herbert Levine, Inc. was still making 900 pair of shoes a day.

Herbert Levine shoes were distributed in numerous boutiques and high-end department stores across the United States and Canada including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Joseph and Bonwit Teller. Herbert Levines were also the first American shoes to be carried overseas by retailers such as Galeries Lafayette in Paris and Harrods in London.

In the 1950s, Herbert Levine advertisements were drawn by famous New York illustrator Saul Steinberg and were regularly published in The New Yorker and in Harper's Bazaar.

Closed in 1975, the label was shortly revived in 2008 by Dennis Comeau and is today owned by Luvanis, an investment holding company.

The Herbert Levine label gained media notoriety for outlandish designs: gilded wood platforms, slippers with newspaper, money, or candy-wrapper covered fabrics, Astroturf insoles, and shoes that were glued onto the wearer's nylon stockings.

Herbert Levine’s greatest influence however was re-introducing boots to women's fashion in the 1960s and the popularization of the shoe style known as mules.

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