Women of Red Wing Shoe: Built to Fit. Built to lead

It was natural for me to make the first story for Between the Bricks about the Red Wing Shoe Company.

It’s been a part of downtown Red Wing for more than a century. Its boots have traveled around the world, and the World’s Largest Boot has become a wonderfully strange local landmark that visitors and residents can’t resist photographing. Yet behind the boots and giant attraction are generations of people whose work built the company.

For this exhibit, I wanted to look closely at the women in this story.

Women of Red Wing Shoe follows women’s work and leadership from the factory floor in 1908 to the company’s first woman CEO today. Inside the display case, the story unfolds from to to bottom. You’ll need to get close because some of my favorite details are very small!

The top: Built to fit. Built to Lead

The top section connects two rooms and two moments in time.

One room is inspired by a 1908 postcard photograph of the Fitting Room at Red Wing Shoe Company’s plant. The Fitting Room was where workers stitched pieces of leather together to create shoe uppers. The women shown working there were known as fitters. Red Wing Shoe Company Archivist Claire L. identified several of them: Louise Falke, Anna Blaud, and Mary Ogren.

Edith Harris is the woman standing near the corner in the photograph. She supervised the Fitting Department, which matters because during this period, men held over 90% of all factory foreman or supervisor positions. Knowing some of the other workers' names makes this more than an anonymous factory scene. These women had names. They had skills and responsibilities. And one woman supervised an important part of production during the company’s earliest years.

The miniature room includes a tiny sewing machine and worktable positioned in front of the historical photograph. The three-dimensional objects blend into the image, allowing the room to extend beyond the photograph and into the present display.

Across the hallway from the production floor is a modern office inspired by Allison Gettings, who became Red Wing Shoe Company’s President and CEO in 2023. Allison is the fourth generation in her family to lead the company, and the first woman to do so.

A quote in the middle section of the exhibit reflects her responsibility to carry the company’s heritage forward while building its future. I wanted the office to feel current while still being connected to the people and work that came before her. Look closely at the photographs, papers, and other tiny clues tucked around the room. There is also a tiny Red Wing Shoe Company Foundation binder sitting on Allison’s desk. The Foundation invests in the communities where Red Wing Shoe Company employees live and work, focusing on education, the arts and sciences, and opportunities to enjoy the natural environment.

On the cover of the binder is a list of the Foundation’s most recently reported leadership: William J. Sweasy, chair; Suzanne Blue, Allison Gettings, Marisa Kinney, Kim Lyons, and Lacy Schumann, directors; and Jenna Thom, secretary. You will definitely need to look closely to find all of that information in miniature! I included the folder as another small reminder that women’s leadership at Red Wing extends beyond the company itself and into the community.

Between the two spaces is a miniature factory hallway. I wanted something on the wall to reflect the passage of time, so I built a tiny time-clock station. The “clock” is actually a miniature pocket watch, with an unbelievably small rack of employee time cards beneath it.

The hallway connects Edith’s Fitting Room to Allison’s office. That is where the phrase at the heart of this scene appears:

Built to fit. Built to lead.

The middle: The Red Wing Shoe Store

The middle section recreates the Red Wing Shoe flagship store in downtown Red Wing. Anna Johnson, the store’s general manager, manages the tiny store. This section celebrates the place where most people encounter the Red Wing story today. Visitors come to buy boots, explore the museum, see the Wall of Honor, and stand next to a boot large enough to make every adult look tiny.

The miniature shoes and boots in this section are what inspired me to make these dioramas. My husband found them on Etsy while searching for a pair of regular-sized boots! It turns out that in Japan, if you buy a part of boots at the stores there, you get a little ball filled with a mystery pair of mini boots! As soon as he showed me the listing, I bought it as fast as my little fingers could go. And then, when I visited Japan a year or so later, I found the little balls of mystery shoes and boots to buy!

The bottom: The Wall of Honor and the World’s Largest Boot

The final section is inspired by Red Wing Shoe Company’s Wall of Honor, a permanent exhibit celebrating tradespeople and the work they have done in their Red Wing boots. The Wall of Honor celebrates these folks by displaying the worn Red Wing boots that carried them through a lifetime of work. In my miniature version, only the women’s boots are “real” three-dimensional miniatures, giving their stories a little extra space to stand out.

And of course, I had to include the World’s Largest Boot! But in this case, it’s just a size 11D of real boots, lent to me by the Red Wing Shoe Store. And the two little people standing in front of it are my husband Kent and me!

We ordered the figures during a trip to Japan, long before I knew they would someday become visitors inside a miniature Red Wing Shoe store. Their appearance here makes me ridiculously happy. We spend a lot of time building things together, and Kent has helped solve more than a few construction puzzles during this project. It feels right that our tiny selves get to stand there and take it all in.

Look closely

This piece combines historical research with artistic interpretation. It does not attempt to tell the complete history of women at Red Wing Shoe Company. The 1908 postcard shows that women were part of footwear manufacturing during the company’s early years. We can see their work. Because of the archives, we can also name some of them.

More than a century later, a woman leads the company.

From Supervisor Edith Harris and the fitters in 1908 to President and CEO Allison Gettings today, women have helped shape Red Wing Shoe Company.

Women of Red Wing: Built to fit. Built to lead.

Come see Women of Red Wing Shoe Company inside the Between the Bricks display in downtown Red Wing. Move close to the glass, peek through the doors, and look all the way down to the smallest boots.

There is always more to the story when we take the time to look closely.

See you downtown,

Megan