In choosing a brand or label to start a comprehensive & research-driven series of footwear brand profiles, Nine West seems to be a good launch point given their shoes occupy the largest amount of space in my closet. At first view of  Nine West's footwear products, one will most likely see a good variety of both trendy, of-the-moment styles as well as season-to-season classics. Referencing the styles of shoes and boots in my own collection, from current-season styles to my oldest pairs...dating back to around 2006 or 2007...the nature of the designs and styles themselves tell not only a story of their time as a fashion brand, but it also gives a glimpse of the style ecosystem and the hierarchy of design which we'll hopefully get to explore in future articles in the series.

Given their business shifts and organizational changes throughout the brand's near-50 year existence, Nine West's current iteration can be best described as a value/mass to mid-range label, focused primarily in women's footwear, but also marketing and distributing apparel and accessories through direct channel e-commerce, along with product distribution through many regional and national department store chains, including Nordstrom, Macy's, Kohl's, and DSW among many others. Additionally, the resale market for Nine West's footwear is generally robust; eBay and Poshmark searches will yield a good variety of styles, style variations, and sizes. Surprisingly, a recent Etsy search resulted in a handful of products and styles from their peak pre-2000 era. In that thought, the condition was surprisingly good based on the photos taken. While a lot of people, especially older generations, will see a comment like this and come to a conclusion like, "tHeY dOn'T mAkE 'eM lIkE tHeY uSeD tO!!!", there's enough insight on my end to explore that theory in greater detail, at least in regard to Nine West's products.

Throughout this article, we'll explore in greater detail the brand's history, organizational structure, technical elements, and provide product quality commentary alongside traditional styling and design notes often featured in fashion & style blogs. That said, let's get started!

In doing some general research on the brand, there was a bit of discrepancy regarding their origin date. While Wikipedia's Nine West page [1], notes that the company was founded in 1983, many business journals trace the brand's incorporation origin to 1977.

(Note: The Wikipedia discrepancy is most likely based on Nine West's first brick-and-mortar storefront opening in 1983.)

It was at this time which founders Vince Camuto, who later went on to form the eponymous Camuto Group, and Jerome Fisher, previously working as a contractor for the Bank of Sumimoto came together to form the Fisher Camuto Group. According to Mr. Camuto's CDFA profile [2], he and Mr. Fisher, who became acquainted as both were previously involved with projects as contractors for the Bank of Sumimoto in Japan, became aware of production potential in Brazil. Citing fundinguniverse.com's brand profile:

After the incorporation of the Fisher Camuto Group, the pair established their offices at 9 West 57th St in New York City in 1978...this would later become the inspiration to name the brand, "Nine West". Camuto would serve as creative director for the majority of the following 20 years, at which time the brand would experience significant growth; again citing the fundinguniverse.com profile, sales from 1988 to 1992 increased from $338.7 million to $461.6 million, and reported income increased from $14.3 million to $38.2 million (USD)...this was impressive given the economic uncertainty of that time. By 1996 and after the acquisition of various footwear brands, the portfolio reported sales of $1.6 billion and reported income of $95 million (USD).

It was around 1997 that, at least from a business organizational standpoint, things started changing for Nine West. An SEC investigation into the brand's accounting practices, specific to sales reporting, and an anti-trust lawsuit against the company brought on by independent store owners alleging unfair competition through the distribution of product to major department stores, eventually led to significant restructuring. Nine West was purchased by the Jones Apparel Group in 1999. By March of 2000, the anti-trust suit was settled and the company held a clean slate.

Fast-Forwarding the following 18 years...in the 2000's Nine West engaged in unique designer collaborations with both emerging and established designers such as Vivienne Westwood, Sophia Kokosalaki, and Thakoon. Additionally, in or around the early 2010's the brand established two upscale-market collections; Boutique 9 and Nine West Vintage America. Though both product lines hit higher price points than their main product catalog, the impression of a higher-quality product was a focal point in the marketing of these two collections.

In 2013, a reorganization of Jones Apparel Group occurred and the group was renamed to Nine West Holdings. This was at or around the time Jones was purchased by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. In the following years, there were a bunch of reorganizations of numerous companies and brands in the group's sphere of influence, but as it relates to Nine West the holding company declared bankruptcy in April 2018, and the Nine West brand was purchased by Authentic Brands Group (ABG) the following July. At time of writing, Nine West remains a brand asset in the ABG portfolio.

In terms of more recent brand/influencer/public figure collaborations, in 2019 Nine West held a collaboration with the now-defunct "Man Repeller" digital publication. The collaboration featured Man Repeller founder Leandra Medine (Cohen) & Women of Color author LaTanya Yvette, along with their best friend/sister-friend & biological sister, respectively, in which products from the main line's Spring/Summer 2019 collection were featured. To date, that is seemingly the last collaboration by Nine West.

(Note: Though no content from "Man Repeller" was cited directly, and though the website is no longer actively maintained, the series referenced above can be viewed at the following link: https://repeller.com/sisters-style-each-other/ )

At time of writing, Nine West's online product catalog contains 1583 unique product offerings. As as estimation, that would most likely break down to around a few hundred unique styles, each with a handful of color & material variants. Footwear categories are broken down into boots, booties, heels, mules & slides, flats & loafers, and sandals. Though promotion at time of writing is focused on their current collection (fall/winter 2022) the product catalog also includes offerings from previous seasons.

As a benchmark for featured merchandise, Nine West will regularly curate collections based on a design element or theme. E-mail marketing and website branding will refer to the Need It Now Edit, or N.I.N.E for short, as 9 product groups...maybe incidental, probably intentional...are being promoted.  At time of writing (fall/winter 2022 collection), the themes are:

1. Royal Hues (featuring jewel-toned shoes, booties, and boots)
2. In the Clear (featuring shoes with translucent uppers, straps, and other details)
3. Power Platforms (hopefully self-explanatory)
4. The Statement Slouch (featuring boots and booties/ankle boots with ruched, 'slouchy' detailing along the shaft)
5. Mixed Metals (featuring shoes and booties with metal ornamentation & accenting)
6. Tough Lugs (featuring lug-sole shoes, booties, and boots)
7. Precious Gems (featuring shoes, booties, and boots with rhinestone and crystal-like accents and embellishments)
8. Wild Western (featuring boots and booties designed to a cowboy-inspired theme...some items feature a stiletto heel, as that's obviously western ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  )
9. Get Prepped (featuring loafers, mary janes, and pastels; styling toward a prep-school theme)

The N.I.N.E can be checked out at https://ninewest.com/collections/n-i-n-e

As a mass-production retailer of apparel, footwear, and accessories, it's probably a valid conclusion to say that Nine West follows practices consistent with other fast-fashion retailers and manufacturers and uses any methods available to them to churn out as many products as possible, and as quickly as possible. Citing this article's earlier observations, a product catalog with a few hundred styles and slightly over 1,500 unique variants doesn't yield much room for error from a design cycle standpoint.

In terms of footwear pricing at time of writing, a consumer can spend, at a floor benchmark, around $30 base retail for prior season summer styles such as sandals and sneakers, and at a ceiling benchmark, around $240 base retail for certain styles of ankle booties & tall-shaft boots. That being said, ninewest.com almost always runs some sort of sale, so at any given point odds are slightly in a consumer's favor that markdowns of 10%-40% will be accessible. Additionally, the site has a relatively decent rewards program that tiers discounts based on a given consumer's purchases throughout their time as a member.

Going into detail on the topic of product construction, Nine West's current product catalog has a country/region of manufacture origin primarily based in China and Vietnam. This has been consistent at the very least since 2006, as my oldest pair is stamped as 'Made in China'.

Citing the research outlined earlier in the article, Nine West's original country/region of manufacture origin was Brazil. This is traceable to as late as the early-to-mid 1990's, as images of products during the research conducted for this article were stamped 'Made in Brazil'. Without seeing a sample of the brand's product catalog in that period...essentially, shoes made by Nine West between around 1995 and 2006, and maybe even before that time...I do not want to speculate the time that the shift in production from Brazil to China occured, though if I were to place a range, I would theorize that such a major shift occurred around the time that Jones Apparel Group acquired Nine West.

Is the country/region of origin manufacture even that big of a deal for a value/mass to mid-range brand? While it's unfortunate that there's western (U.S and European) bias as it comes to the relationship of product quality for a wide range of products and manufacture origins based in China and eastern mainland Asia generally, the scope of such a topic is too large and substantive for the much-more-narrow scope of this article.

In terms of shoe/boot construction, Nine West uses leather, suede, and synthetic uppers and a synthetic sole almost exclusively for their designs. As illustrated to the right (or on the bottom for mobile device viewports), I've chosen the same style of boot from my collection, the "Maxim" in three variants and from the brand's fall/winter 2019 collection, as an illustration of product materials and construction.

From left to right; the white boot features a leather upper as indicated on the interior product stamp, the medium-to-dark tan boot features a suede upper, again as indicated on the interior product stamp, and the snakeskin-patterned boot features a synthetic upper. All three styles implement a cemented construction method to bind the upper to the sole, and each of the boots have near identical synthetic soles. Each boot variant uses a padded fabric lining with an overlay of, possibly, synthetic leather to bind the top of the upper to the lining.

Despite the contrast in materials, each style variant seemingly constructs the upper using the same panel shapes...I was able to consistently count 5 individual pieces of material to construct the upper, and with each variant the panel shapes were similar, if not geometrically identical to one another. This pattern isn't always the case, as with certain style variants that alter between synthetic and natural leather materials there will be slight construction changes such a split seam from the toe box up through the vamp with synthetic styles, and solid, single panel construction in the toe box and vamp for leather styles.

Observations on Product Quality From the Perspective of My Own Collection:

Given that the article has made an attempt to provide an overview of the brand from a historical, business organizational, and product design, and technical design perspective, what can be said about the quality of Nine West's footwear? Honestly, there are a combination of variables that come into play in attempting to make an objective assessment. Consumer factors such as, "How does the consumer use and wear these shoes?", "What type of climate & weather is present as the user is wearing these shoes?", and "How does the consumer store, maintain, and care for the shoes?" can determine at the very least longevity, and in some cases can have a downstream effect on the quality of any given pair of shoes or boots. Add to that factors in the manufacturing process such as, "How consistent are products made from an assembly perspective?", "How much variation is there in the materials used to construct a given shoe?", and "How strict are quality standards and controls followed in the manufacturing process?", and ultimately without moderate-to-extensive knowledge into these processes along with experience as a consumer, a non-biased assessment is difficult, if not impossible to make.

With that out of the way, my own comments are based solely on a single and unique construction, of a handful of styles and style variants, acquired over a period between 2006 and 2022.

• With each style that I have owned, I have never experienced either a minor nor a significant separation of the sole and the shoe or boot upper
• With certain styles I have observed, in the glueing/cemented construction process, that there is an excess of glue in certain spaces which the upper and sole are joined. Though it is an annoying cosmetic defect, it has never seemingly affected (at least at time of writing) the binding of the upper and the sole.
• As ankle boots and taller shaft boots age, the wear and decay of the lining becomes very apparent...see the images in the slideshow to the right for additional context
  • In the first slide, the style is Nine West's "Icedout" boot from the fall/winter 2008 season (approximate). The boots saw semi-regular wear for the first few seasons I owned them, and progressively less wear after those initial few years. Though stored, the padded fabric lining began to separate from the upper and the accented lining material began to peel and flake. The flaked material would stick to pants, jeans, socks, or bare legs depending on how they were worn.
  • In the second slide, the style is Nine West's "Holdtight" boot from the fall/winter 2016 season. This style differs slightly from the previous in that there is no padded fabric lining...instead it is a synthetic material bound to the upper. Along the sides of the style's partial zipper, there is a similar flaking as referenced above in the prior style. Since there is a significant difference in age, I am curious around how the interior lining will deteriorate if stored under the same or similar conditions.
• Though not intended to be a direct comparison to brands and designers considered beyond/above mid-tier, similarly aged shoes and boots with leather linings and different construction methods have not experienced similar decay. Some of those designers/labels/brands will be featured in future "Brand Profile" articles

Granted A LOT of information was covered throughout this profile, perhaps the most important aspect of exploring a brand is making a determination of whether or not they are worth a given consumer's money. Like many of the other questions posed throughout this article a lot of factors, from brand loyalty, to business ethics, to environmental practices, among others can influence a buyer's decision to purchase or not to purchase.

While the purpose of the content in our "Brand Profile" series are not to influence consumer decision-making, we are confident enough in our research and insights to say that at this time, Nine West still has a spot in the greater fashion and style ecosystem. Granted the organization has experienced their highs and lows throughout their near-50 year history, the fact that they continue to operate in one corporate structure or another eludes to the brand's scrappiness, if anything.

In terms of the core footwear line in itself, there is an ebb and flow to consumer's decision to engage with the brand. On one end, due to the sheer amount of footwear product offerings Nine West provides, if a consumer is feeling out the need to try something new, and outside of their fashion & personal style comfort zone, a visit to ninewest.com may provide enough inspiration to try a footwear style unconceived of otherwise.

On the other end however, fashion conscious consumers comfortable with classic styles, and with the resources to opt for brands with higher material quality and construction methods will most likely just throw down the extra cash up front and buy the investment piece over the downstream, fast-fashion dupe.

In the end, Nine West's core components to continuity will be keeping the balance of managing an extensive product catalog while captivating the consumer, trying to maintain a baseline quality standard for their respective price points, and navigating an increasingly volatile consumer goods economy in the face of uncertainty. Will Nine West continue to operate 2, 3, or 5 years from now given their organizational history? Who knows!? But in that same sentiment they, for now, at least still have a seat at the table.

Shoe Sanctimony Brand Rating: 3.1 out of 5