Every sneaker lover dreams of a unique, hand-decorated pair, like the one created by Maestro in Custom. Behind this brand, the Lyonnaise Barbara Cloupet designs, paints, cuts, sews, refines up to 300 pairs per year. Goldorak, Naruto, a club logo: with his brushes and acrylic paint, the artist can do it all. And his joy in creating, in listening to the wishes of his clients, is that of someone who has come a long way.
“I started custom as art therapy,” she explains. “At 17, I met the wrong person, and for fifteen years I experienced all types of violence. The young woman felt for a long time drained of strength until the click that brought her out of this hell. “It was six years ago, but the aftermath was still complicated,” she says. “When I started custom, it was mainly to make me happy. And I realized that once immersed in it, I no longer thought about it. It did me a world of good, it organized my days…”
Self-taught training that hit the mark
Barbara Cloupet did not hope to make a living from it. However, she has a real talent, inherited from her grandfather. As a child, she wanted to make drawing her profession, “but they closed the doors to me saying that you had to have a hell of a talent, a hell of a personality above all, and me, as I’m a discreet person, I dropped the deal…” So she worked at the factory, testing engines during the day and continuing to design at night. Until the meeting with his current companion.
This one, holding a sneaker shop in Oullins, suggests the custom. “I tried for fun, first with the wrong tools, markers that didn’t stick. So I did some digging, I watched a lot of tutorials, I canvassed American artists to find out what paint to use and how… It’s a real job! Bitten, she published photos of her creations
on Instagram hoping for some orders. Three years later, she has enough to live on and is still amazed: “The photos I publish are my current orders, I don’t have time to stock up! »
A wide range of customers for all budgets
Barbara Cloupet works to order, and sells her creations at her husband’s store for sportswear, and at the Evok Shoes store for luxury pairs. “It gives me a wide range of customs: I can make some for a kid who doesn’t have a big budget, and do more complex things, with the resulting budget, for the luxury boutique. The maximum is 450 euros, excluding a pair. But it will be full custom, with more sophisticated designs than a Peppa Pig for a child! The price is really a function of the difficulty of realization, and of the time that I spend there. »
The “couture” pairs are the most requested: “In 2021, out of 300 pairs, I had to do 250 couture. The others sometimes require 30 hours of drawing for certain sketches, whereas in two hours, the couture pair is made, this is what ensures my salary. But my real pleasure is painting…” This dream come true, Barbara Cloupet forms another: to have a small studio. “I invested in a Singer cobbler sewing machine, and it takes up a lot of space in my house! she laughs.