Students style soles to give ‘one for one’

Blobs of paint dotted a paper plate as freshman Madeline Hall dipped her paintbrush into the black, filling in an outline of a mustache on her pair of white TOMS shoes.

“I used to watch Mitch Davis a lot on YouTube,” she said. “Whenever I’m in lack of ideas, I go to mustaches.”

Hall and other members of the TOMS Shoes Club at IU decorated shoes and other items Friday at their Style Your Sole event.

After Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS shoes, spoke at the “Check Your Label: Elements of Conscious Consumerism” series on Feb. 5, senior Erica Schori, co-founder of the club, said the group wanted to follow up with another event to bring in new members and raise awareness for the club.

In 2006, Mycoskie started the company with a “one for one” mission. For each pair of shoes sold, one new pair would be donated to a child in need.

“Everything that you buy from the company, they give a pair of shoes,” Schori said. “Everything they give is a pair that the kids need. Like in Ethiopia in the rainy season, they give them rain boots.”

Schori said she and junior Emily Nicholls, co-founder of the club, applied on the TOMS shoes Web site to become campus representatives and received official recognition for the club by IU.

For the Style Your Sole event, students ordered a pair of white shoes in advance and brought them to decorate, Nicholls said.

“We wanted to bring out everyone’s artistic side,” Schori said. “You can decorate any way you want. I’m trying to paint ‘Starry Night’ on mine.”

Brown and black paint covered freshman Chris Burke’s first pair of TOMS shoes. After hearing Mycoskie speak, Burke said he grasped the whole idea about the company’s cause.

“I think it’s cool,” he said. “Even though it’s a for-profit organization, they’re giving back. I’m interested in it because I’m a non-profit major.”

Burke said he was painting the pair of shoes “guitar style.”

“I was a little nervous at first,” he said. “But they’re just going to get dirty anyway.”
Freshman Kelly Fritz said she heard about the decorating through friends and decided to tag along.

“Someone was like ‘free art supplies,’” she said. “I’m painting a peacock. Whenever I’m doodling, I always draw birds and things.”

Though she had vaguely heard of the cause before, Fritz said the event and cause was “right up her alley.”

“I think it’s a really good way to get the word out,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise, to be honest.”