Shoes blaze Budget-Day trail
The first woman in Canada to become minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, delivered her inaugural federal budget speech on April 19. As detailed here, fine leather shoes from Italy had an important role to play in making the occasion historic.
For reasons no one can explain, Budget Day in Canada is a big day for the footwear industry. The finance minister nearly always wears a pair of new shoes to give the official speech in which the federal budget for the year ahead is revealed to parliament and the nation. “The origins behind the Canadian tradition of the minister of finance wearing new shoes to deliver the budget speech in the House of Commons remain unknown,” the Parliament of Canada confirms. “The earliest mention we have been able to verify appears in newspaper articles related to the 1955 budget speech.” But the tradition is older than that because the newspaper reports in question take then-finance minister, Walter Harris, to task for choosing to wear “almost new” rather than brand new shoes as tradition dictated even then.
Visual messages
Now, a pre-speech photo opportunity of the minister with new shoes is an important part of the event and politicians have begun to use this as a chance to send a visual message to citizens about the state of the economy.Following the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, for example, Jim Flaherty had shoes he already owned resoled instead of buying new ones for Budget Day to offer an example of frugality. In 2015, his successor, Joe Oliver, presented the first balanced budget since the crisis and, to mark this, decided to deliver his speech wearing running shoes from, yes, New Balance.
In 2017 and 2018, finance minister, Bill Morneau, joined those who have used the occasion to promote Canada’s domestic shoe industry, choosing brogues from Edmonton-based brand Poppy Barley. First, he picked the company’s Edmonton Oxford Black shoes and followed up a year later with the Jasper Derby Black Calf and Black Deer. Poppy Barley still stocks these as two of only four men’s dress-shoe styles on offer (its main focus is on women’s footwear) and it makes their status as Budget Day shoes a selling point in each case.
New ground
Ordinarily then, new shoes for Budget Day 2021 in April would have broken no new ground. Even the minister’s choice of shoes from a Canadian brand was just following a tradition that predecessors, including Bill Morneau, had already established. But there was one important change. When Mr Morneau resigned in August 2020, his replacement was Chrystia Freeland, who, in addition to the duties she already had as deputy prime minister, became the country’s fortieth finance minister.
She is the first woman to hold the finance role and, therefore, the first woman to have to choose new shoes for the big Budget Day photo opportunity. The visual messages that her selection sent included the clear indication that Canada is a country for entrepreneurs, a country for people from all cultures and all parts of the world, and, definitely, a country for women.
Her choice was a pair of a new version of Rayna pumps from Toronto-based brand Zvelle. The shoes are so new to the brand’s collection that its founder, Elle AyoubZadeh, rushed an advance pair to the minister just in time for her speech on April 19. The shoes come from her main supplier, a family-run company in Italy. They have a six-centimetre heel and are made from black nappa, tanned in Italy. “The minister appreciated the craftsmanship of the shoes, their classic, timeless look and the fact that they are comfortable,” the Zvelle founder says.
Proud footwear start-up
Elle AyoubZadeh launched Zvelle in 2015, having arrived in Canada around eight years earlier. She had spent time studying and working in Australia and New Zealand, but her origins are in the Middle East. She was born in Iran. Rayna was the name she gave to the first shoes she designed. “In Persian script, the number five looks like an upside-down heart,” Ms AyoubZadeh explains, “and this inspired the design. You can see the shape of the heart in the vamp of the Rayna shoe the minister wore.”
She says she is proud to have supplied the shoes to Chrystia Freeland and to have been a part of history. The design incorporates another element that Zvelle has developed, something else that honours trail-blazing women. This version of the Rayna includes what she calls “wing detailing” on the side of the upper. She borrowed this idea from another Zvelle model, the Amelia, named in honour of the first woman to fly alone, non-stop across the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart.
Ms AyoubZadeh says the main delivery of the Rayna shoes the minister wore has been held up by covid-19 but should be in stock soon. “Had it not been for covid, the shoes would be here right now,” she insists. They are coming soon and will be available to customers in the US as well as Canada, giving customers on both sides of the border the chance to grab a piece of history.
Canada’s minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, wears shoes from Zvelle for Budget Day 2021.
Credit: Dave Chan
