Terry de Havilland has been involved in the design and manufacture of footwear since the 1950’s. He was introduced to the craft by his parents who were themselves independent shoemakers from the East End of London. Terry’s earliest memories are of his father creating shoes in the shed at the bottom of the garden. These were platform shoes for the black market in 1940’s war-torn Britain.

A clandestine marriage and a period in Rome saw Terry caught up in the crazy social whirl revolving around Fellini’s filming of ‘La Dolce Vita’. Immersed in the glamour surrounding the likes of Ava Gardner and Anita Ekberg was to prove a huge inspiration for Terry in the years to come.

In 1960 his father called him back to London to help out with the family business. It quickly became apparent that Terry had an extraordinary talent for design and pattern cutting. With young Terry’s impetus and the advent of winkle pickers, the family business thrived. One of Terry’s first clients was Paul Smith who owned a boutique called the Bird Cage in Nottingham, but his big break really came when Annie Traherne, the fashion editor of Queen magazine, discovered and championed his cause.

Having made up some patchwork snakeskin three tiered wedge sandals, Terry showed them to his friend Johnny Moke who bought them for his boutique in Kensington Market ‘Rowley & Oram’. The shoes proved to be a huge hit and made regular customers of the rock n roll set; Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Britt Eckland, Cher, Bette Midler, LuLu, and most memorably Angie and David Bowie. In 1970, Terry de Havilland took over the family business upon the sad and untimely death of his father brought about by an accident in the factory. Terry’s father died cradled in his arms. His father’s death pulled Terry up by the bootstraps. He was now the head of the family, and the business He worked incessantly and it paid off. The Terry de Havilland styles gained recognition and the customer base grew and grew.

In 1972 de Havilland opened ‘COBBLERS TO THE WORLD’ on the Kings Road in London’s Chelsea. It was the first of it’s kind – a vision of peach mirror glass walls, a tented ceiling featuring an oversized chandelier and purple velvet banquette seats, described - memorably - at the time as a Venetian Bordello! Fashion shunned glamour in the early 80s and embraced Doc Martens trainer and Almond-Toe low heel shoes. Terry found himself in a creative desert, and retreated his workshop to make specially comissioned items for the Congnoscenti. Such a creative talent could not stay dormant, and Terry emerged with new partners in 2004 to re-launch the Terry De Havilland brand. To huge critical acclaim by the fashion press and retailers. His collection is now stocked by many of the World's finest luxury retailers.

The story rolls on....