Dominic Chambrone

The L.A.-based Shoe Surgeon takes sneakerhead devotion and expertise to the next level.

Howie Kahn

April 6, 2018 5:45 a.m. ET

I’M PACKING UP LeBron’s shoes right now,” says Dominic Chambrone, the 31-year-old cobbler and custom-sneaker maker otherwise known as the Shoe Surgeon. He’s referring to the gift Nike commissioned him to create for LeBron James, one of the company’s marquee athletes, in honor of his 30,000th NBA point. Chambrone, whose sneakers have sold for as much as $10,000 and whose clients include Drake, DJ Khaled and the Miami Heat, says the one-off high-tops for James were his toughest pair to date. “Our first attempt wasn’t good enough,” he explains. “So we started over and made something incredible.” The final result is a gold-accented python riff on James’s signature Nike, the LeBron 15, which Chambrone converted from a slip-on to a zip-up, adding a gold zipper running vertically along its upper. “It’s amazing Nike respects my work and how far I’ve come,” Chambrone says. “But I feel like I’m just getting started.”

Chambrone began customizing shoes for friends in high school in Santa Rosa, California. After graduation, he looked for a way to more thoroughly master his craft. “Nobody wanted to hire a young cobbler apprentice type,” he says, but eventually he found a mentor in a shoe repair shop in Windsor, California. From there, he put in hours sewing, investigating rare materials and stretching them out over the lasts he was learning to make himself. His newfound mastery led him to customize shoes for will.i.am, Justin Bieber and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which centered the plotline of a 2011 episode around one of his creations.

Three years ago, Chambrone moved to Los Angeles and opened the downtown studio he’s now growing out of. “We tripled the size of our team in the last year,” he notes. Late in 2017, Chambrone took on a client, Dallas Imbimbo, as his new business partner. Imbimbo, 32, has already made millions developing businesses in disparate fields (construction equipment rental; commercial marijuana packaging), and expanding Chambrone’s brand is in the works.

They recently leased a West Hollywood classroom space, where Chambrone holds $3,000 weekend-long shoemaking workshops for groups of 20 to 25 Shoe Surgeon loyalists. Announced to his more than 300,000 Instagram followers, the classes sell out fast, and he has also offered sessions in New York and London. Later this year, Chambrone plans on revealing his first signature sneaker. “We’ll start with one high-top,” he says. “I’m just so excited. I wake up at 4:30 a.m. and get into the studio as fast as I can.” theshoesurgeon.com

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WORD LIST:

Cobbler
Shoe Surgeon
NBA
LeBron James
31 years old
Gold-Accented Python riff
Nike
Sewing
Celebrities
Los Angelas
high tops
basketball players
sewing machine
300,000 Instragram followers
Around the world
studio
tools
leather
shoe laces
Sole
Heart & Sole (haha)
Skull & crossbones (crossbones as scalpels and face mask on skull)
Shattered backboard
Basketball
Rappers
Scalpels
Mask
Shoe tongue

ILLUSTRATOR CHOICE

Peter Brown - Illustrator

Peter Brown is from New Jersey. He attended the Art Center College for Design and studied Illustration. He specializes mostly in children's books and has been an children's book illustrator and author for quite some time. He uses a lot of shapes for his illustrations and uses more earth tone type colors for his work. He uses both classic and modern forms of artwork in his creation of his books. He usually begins by painting with ink, watercolor, or gouache. He then scans the images into the computer, where he can adjust them to fit the scene exactly how he wants.

PHOTO INSPIRATION: