Herbert Levine

The Herbert Levine label was named after former journalist Herbert. His wife, Beth, was the primary shoe designer of the label. She designed the footwear while Herbert handled the factory management, sales, and marketing.

Herbert Levine, Inc. established its first factory on 31 West 31st Street in New York in January 1949. The factory started with a production of 400 pairs of shoes a week; by 1954, it had 200 employees producing 5,000 pair of shoes a week. In 1975, Herbert Levine, Inc. was still making 900 pairs of shoes a day.

Herbert Levine shoes were distributed in numerous boutiques and high-end department stores across the United States and Canada, including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Joseph and Bonwit Teller. Herbert Levine shoes were also the first American shoes to be carried overseas by retailers such as Galeries Lafayette in Paris and Harrods in London.

Herbert Levine is widely credited as the first label to have introduced boots into Haute Couture. As early as 1953, Herbert Levine introduced a calf-length boot in white kidskin, which sold poorly. Most retailers saw boots as a separate category of footwear from shoes, to be worn for protection from bad weather or for work. By contrast, Herbert Levine argued that boots were shoes and could be an integral part of a woman's outfit. In 1957, Herbert Levine produced an entire collection built around fashion boots, and despite widespread skepticism on the part of other designers and manufacturers, calf-high, kitten-heeled fashion boots for women began to grow in popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In the 1950s, Herbert Levine advertisements were drawn by famous New York illustrator Saul Steinberg and were regularly published in The New Yorker and in Harper's Bazaar. In 1980, Andy Warhol photographed a series of Herbert Levine shoes.

Mr. and Mrs. Levine were hired in 1965, along with famed couturier Emilio Pucci and designer Alexander Girard, to help overhaul a new look and style for Braniff International Airways. The campaign, developed by Jack Tinker and partner Mary Wells Lawrence, was dubbed The End Of The Plain Plane, and was a revolutionary airline overhaul that had never before been attempted. The campaign was considered one of the most successful advertising and image reworks in history.

Closed in 1975, the label was revived in 2025 through a partnership between heritage brand investment company Luvanis, Milan- and New York-based distributor Massimo Bonini, and former Dsquared2 CEO Gianfranco Maccarrone, with footwear designer Trevor Houston appointed as creative director. Houston—previously head of footwear at Khaite after positions at Marc Jacobs, Coach, The Row and Tory Burch, and an avid collector of vintage Herbert Levine pieces—was identified by the new owners through interviews discussing his personal archive. The first collection debuted at New York Fashion Week in February 2025 and reached stores in September, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods, Le Bon Marché and Mytheresa; production was relocated to Italy's Marche region, and the inaugural campaigns were photographed by Mark Borthwick.