OTMA Shoes Alert (sort of)
I recently came across a listing from a Russian seller offering a pair of pre-revolutionary women’s ballroom shoes from Henry Weiss, identified as Supplier to the Imperial Court.
In fact, Henri (Heinrich) Karlovich Weiss (Генрих Карлович Вейсс) was one of the leading luxury shoemakers of late Imperial Russia and indeed an official Supplier to the Imperial Court. Based in St. Petersburg, his flagship shop operated at 66 Nevsky Prospect, one of the city's most prestigious commercial addresses.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Weiss had built a reputation for high-quality bespoke footwear, maintaining workshops and a factory that served elite clientele. The firm operated until 1917, when the revolution ended it along with everything else on the Nevsky.
His firm supplied shoes to members of the Romanov family, including Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her children, and appears in surviving Imperial Court expense records.
The bills for Grand Duchess Maria in 1909 show forty pairs delivered in a single year fabric pumps and kid leather flats for indoor use at 14 to 18 roubles a pair, white canvas shoes with a leather sole at 16 roubles, rubber galoshes at 2 roubles 25 kopecks, and white felt fur-lined overshoes at 60 roubles. Hardware — buckles, lasts, insoles — was billed separately. In 1910, Weiss charged Maria's account twice: 742 roubles in January and 815 roubles later in the year, for 33 pairs.
The same supplier served all four sisters. Each paid her own account; each received her own deliveries. The total annual throughput from Weiss's workshop across Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia was likely in the region of 6,000 roubles - the equivalent, at the wage rates of the time, of several years' earnings for a skilled St. Petersburg tradesman.
Early photographs show the sisters (and Alexei) in simple white leather slippers with silk pompoms, worn with ankle socks.
By their teens the range had expanded. Weiss supplied flats and pumps - fabric malieras in white, black, yellow, bronze, and pink kid - priced at 14 to 18 roubles a pair. White canvas shoes with a leather sole came to 16 roubles. Based on the gold-standard exchange rate of the period adjusted for inflation, that puts a single pair at roughly $225–$290 / €205–€265 in today's money.
