What happened to the kinky boots factory

e new Kinky Boots cast

THE moment his final lesson finished Steve Pateman went straight from the classroom to the factory floor at WJ Brookes.

 

Then 17 he was following in the footsteps of four generations of his family at the Northamptonshire shoemaking firm.

Over the next 14 years Steve learned everything about the craft and gradually worked his way to the top.

By 1993 he was managing director but demand for traditional, high-quality, leather men’s brogues had slumped.

 

Steve Pateman and show songwriter Cyndi Lauper

Steve feared he had no option but to close the factory and condemn the entire workforce to the dole.

Then came the telephone call that was to change their fortunes.

Steve was asked if he could make ladies’ shoes and boots in men’s sizes for cross-dressers.

The story of how the factory was saved when production was switched to supply this niche market in footwear was told in the Hollywood film Kinky Boots and also became a hit musical on Broadway.

Yesterday previews of the West End version of the show, featuring songs by Cyndi Lauper, began at London’s Adelphi theatre and it opens officially next month.

However most audiences won’t be aware of the bittersweet ending to the real-life events that inspired Kinky Boots.

WJ Brookes was founded in 1898 and Steve Pateman joined his father Richard there in 1979.

It was a period of turmoil as in the second half of the 20th century inferior but cheaper imports from the Far East decimated the British shoemaking industry.

 

We were paying wages and made quality shoes but we had no work for our people

Steve Pateman

Northamptonshire has been the heartland of British shoemaking since medieval times.

In the 19th century there were 250 firms in Northampton alone but in the following century scores went to the wall and thousands lost their jobs.

It seemed certain WJ Brookes, in the village of Earls Barton, would be among the casualties.

The firm was making 4,000 pairs of traditional shoes a week but the strong value of the pound, interest rate rises and the flood of imports proved insurmountable.

Steve slashed the workforce from 70 to 55, then eventually to 21 but it still didn’t guarantee survival.

“We were paying wages and made quality shoes but we had no work for our people,” says Steve, now 53.

“The worst time was when I had to make some people redundant, breaking a tradition.”

He tried to soldier on but it was a huge struggle before salvation came from Folkestone.

The owner of a store selling footwear favoured by cross-dressers and drag queens rang to ask if Steve could make thigh-high boots, in red or black leather or PVC, in male sizes.

“We’d done a lot of high heels in the past, as well as Beatle boots, winkle-pickers and creepers,” says Steve.

“So I invested £12,000 in a machine to put 4½in heels on boots.”

Realising there could be a lucrative new market he researched his potential customer base and began creating his own designs.

His boots were reinforced with a metal strut specially designed to hold a man’s weight.

There were also female customers and the boots flew off the production line.

So Steve decided to turn most of the factory over to producing this specialised range called Divine Footwear.

From that time WJ Brookes would always be known as the Kinky Boot Factory.

It was a gamble that saved the remaining jobs and word soon got round.

The drastic measure to transform the fortunes of the ailing firm was featured in BBC Two documentary Trouble At The Top in 1999.

It was seen by the makers of Calendar Girls who were convinced the remarkable story would make another great comedy film.

The result was Kinky Boots, which first hit the big screen in 2005 with the tag line: “How far would you go to save the family business?”

Its hero Charlie inherits the family shoemaking company in Northampton on his father’s death.

On a business trip he meets a drag queen called Lola and after watching him in cabaret hatches the plan to move into kinky footwear.

Lola arrives in Northampton as a design consultant and despite a few raised eyebrows they take their new range to a shoe fair in Milan where it’s a huge success.

The stage version of Kinky Boots had its debut in Chicago in 2012 and wowed audiences in the US.

The following year it moved to Broadway and won six Tony awards, including best musical and best score for Lauper, though Hollywood and Broadway took liberties with the truth.

In real life there was never anyone resembling Lola but some actual events were even more bizarre than anything dreamed up by the scriptwriters.

On one occasion Steve needed someone to model the boots for the company’s brochures and catalogues.

Unsurprisingly none of the male workers volunteered but it was suggested Steve, a burly amateur rugby player, should step up to the plate.

“I had to learn to walk in the boots,” he says. “Of course my legs couldn’t be hairy so I had to learn to shave them.”

On screen and stage there’s naturally a happy ending but in the real world matters didn’t pan out that way.

Competitors soon caught on and Steve was faced with the old problem of cheap foreign imports, plus blatant copies of his boots.

At the same time a deal with a US company collapsed, ultimately ending manufacturing of the racy footwear.

“We were victims of our own success in some ways,” says Steve.

WJ Brookes limped along but finally closed down in 2000 when the last few remaining workers were told it was not viable to continue.

Steve tried to find new jobs for as many as possible but today there are only a handful of shoemakers in the county.

However boots made by Steve can still be seen at Northampton Museum and Art Gallery.

Curator Rebecca Shawcross says: “The county’s shoemakers supplied Oliver Cromwell’s entire army in 1642, while at one stage 15,000 people were employed in the industry in Northampton alone – one in four of the population.

“There was a huge decline in shoemaking from the 1950s but the whole Kinky Boots effect was very positive and helped highlight the long history of the industry here.

“I don’t think there’s any bitterness that the factory eventually closed.

Steve Pateman is regarded as a man who was trying his best to diversify and keep his factory going against the odds.”

These days Steve is a full-time firefighter based in Northampton after deciding to turn his back on the shoemaking business.

There’s a sense of sadness that the kinky boots venture was short lived but pride that he at least had a go.

He never got the opportunity to see Kinky Boots on Broadway so he’s looking forward to seeing the show in London.

He was involved in the making of the fi lm but not the stage versions.

“It’s a whole mix of emotions,” says Steve, who is married to teacher Sara and has a 17-year-old son.

“Some of the workers were with me right from the time I started at WJ Brookes after my O-levels to the day we finished.

We had some fantastic fun and I met some incredible characters but there’s also a sense of guilt that it ended, although the idea did keep us in business for a bit longer.

“If I’d never tried I would always have regretted it and I can hold my head high in the village.”