The partners chosen for the Allen Edmonds Legend Series are selected because they share the brand’s passion for craft. Each collaborator applies their artistic touch and aesthetic to create a new generation of classic shoe styles in the Allen Edmonds’ factory in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
Robinson said the shoe company, which is 102 years old and part of the Caleres portfolio of brands, reached out to him because it had heard about his passion for American craftsmanship.
That includes his most recent fashion endeavor, Paskho, a direct-to-consumer brand of high-tech travel clothes for men and women he launched in 2018. Robinson said that he stopped producing the brand at the beginning of the year to focus all his energy on AwareMade. “Pashko is a very different business, but it opened this door for me,” he said.
He said over the past few years, he has discovered that roughly 60 to 70 percent of Native Americans on reservations do something creative. So he will work with them — starting with the Sioux on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota — to turn these skills into commercially successful businesses. “We hope to share it with more people and more companies like Allen Edmonds,” he said, adding, “That’s what drew me to Allen Edmonds, the fact that they manufacture in America.