He's brought with him a trunkload of museum-quality shoes selected from his collection of more than 3,000 pairs.

Evins and his sister (and business partner) Melissa grew up surrounded by shoes. So much so that their family is often referred to as "the Ferragamos of America."

As they packed their bags for their trip from New York to Hawai'i, Evins said in a phone interview that as toddlers, their playroom was the family's SoHo shoe factory. After school, they helped make tap-dancing shoes for Broadway musicals such as "No, No, Nanette" and sexy pumps for movies such as "Dancing in the Dark."

Their father, Lee Evins, and uncle, David Evins, designed shoes for, among others, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Cher and the Duchess of Windsor. They also made shoes for every first lady from Mamie Eisenhower to Hillary Clinton.

In the world of couture fashion, they have worked with designers such as Galanos and Stephen Sprouse to create runway footwear to flatter clothing.

Linda O'Keeffe, in her book called, simply, "Shoes," said of David Evins: "The wealthy and the powerful flocked to him because they recognized that he was a master of his craft. Even the demanding Duchess of Windsor, the embodiment of snobbishly good taste, routinely commissioned shoes from him and hailed him as a genius ... Movie stars loved him because his creations embodied their own personalities as much as the characters they were meant to portray. He created glamorous mules for Ava Gardner, clunky pumps for his favorite dinner date, Judy Garland, and leopard-skin bootees for the aloof Marlene Dietrich."

Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Tomorrow, if you're wondering why you can only see the right shoe of each pair, it's because the left shoe is in the costume collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Here are a few of the shoes they will show at the Sandal Tree in Ala Moana Center:

• Audrey Hepburn's brocade "Sabrina" pump from the 1954 film of the same name.
• The stiletto mules worn by Jessica Simpson and Hilary Duff for the 2003 MTV Awards.
• Rhinestone "Stop and Go" mules (one red and one green) worn by Ava Gardner in the movie "Dancing in the Dark" with Fred Astaire, 1955.
• Shoes worn by Claudette Colbert (1933) and Elizabeth Taylor (1960) when they each played Cleopatra.
• Grace Kelly's twisted pearl sandals worn in 1959 in "To Catch a Thief."
• Two pairs of satin pumps worn by Nancy Reagan to her husband's inaugurations.
• The shearling wool kabuki shoe created by Herbert Levine, the only shoe ever to be featured on the cover of "Harper's Bazaar."
• Loretta Young's thigh-high turquoise and silver brocade boots.

Shoe secrets

Shoes can give away a woman's secrets. Take, for example, the time when actress Grace Kelly was placing a special order with David Evins. Flats, she said. They must be flats.

That was the give-away.

At a later lunch with a New York society columnist, David Evins mentioned he was making Grace Kelly some flats for a wedding in Monaco. It only took a moment for the columnist to put two and two together: The statuesque actress was the mystery woman who was to marry the somewhat shorter Prince Rainier III.

The secret was out.

Reed Evins is known for his sense of humor and loves to tell shoe stories. Among his favorites: As a child, he was invited onto the set of "The Loretta Young Show" during its first season. The Evins brothers had designed a pair of thigh-high Lycra boots that clipped to Young's black satin corset and girdle to create one seamless line under her negligee. As she made her grand entrance on the spiral staircase before all the cameras, "the girdle, boots — everything came down around her ankles," Evins chuckled.

Shoe-crazy women

Grace Kelly opens a pair of shoes made for her wedding to Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956 by top shoe designer David Evins, left. She was slightly taller than the prince, so she requested flats. Courtesy Reed Evins

O'Keeffe reports the average American woman owns 30 pairs of shoes, while "the passionate collector owns in the hundreds."

Evins reports that Lady Bird Johnson only ordered one pair of David Evins shoes a year. On the other hand, Nancy Reagan ordered six, two styles in three sizes each to allow for different climates and altitudes: size 6 for cold places, 7 for Washington and 8 for Air Force One.

Both generations of Evins are innovators. David Evins was the first designer to use Velcro on sandal straps. He was always ahead of his time — he dyed alligator in vivid colors such as turquoise, a trend seen on the runways in the recent collections in Europe, where alligator appeared in shades of lavender, shrimp and lime green.

21st-century stars

This is the legacy Reed Evins and Melissa continue with their own company, Reed Evins Salon Collection, making shoes for modern women, as well as the current constellation of American stars: Beyoncé, Madonna, Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson.

The line is a modern interpretation of vintage designs paired with futuristic materials. They embody the sexy and sophisticated attitude of mid-20th-century Hollywood, sparing nothing in their sumptuousness and imagination.

This is not the first shoe company for the brother-sister design team. During the mid-1970s, they created a line of funky footwear called Two City Kids, made famous when Mick Jagger wore their metallic jazz shoes on stage, catapulting them into the edgy rock-and-roll crowd.

Paula Sussex

In the late 1980s, they signed on to design shoes for Anne Klein and Anne Klein Studio. At the same time, a young Manolo Blahnik was hired to design shoes for the Anne Klein collection.

The Evins' designs were so successful they were forced to close Two City Kids in order to devote more time to Anne Klein.

Eight years later, they moved to Cole-Haan to catapult the conservative company into a more fashion-forward image.

After five years with Cole-Haan, the two decided to try a new venture, Reed Evins Salon Collection. They presented it to Dawn Mello of Bergdorf Goodman, who snapped up the small collection, and the line was launched.

When the duo turned up again at shoe shows with their own line, Sussex jumped at it. While the Salon collection is a little more serious than Two City Kids, the company still demonstrates a sense of humor with a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward its shoes.

The designers love kinetic ornamentation, such as wires that encase sequins and pearls, and rose petals that shift when moved. For example, a current collection is called "hardware," and has miniature nuts and bolts as embellishments on the sophisticated mules, boots and pumps.

Today's shoe stylings

The credo of the Reed Evins company is still to make feminine, sexy footwear, so he has had to be technically innovative with linings and cushioning to make his shoes more flexible. He calls it "velvet construction," featuring padded sock linings made of soft sheepskin or lambskin shaped anatomically to fit the foot.

While his uncle's shoes were made in America, the Reed Evins shoes are made in Tuscany.

Reed said his shoes often travel all around the world before landing on a Hawai'i woman's foot. Silks may come from Thailand, embroidery from India, beading from China, leather from Italy ... and then they are finally fitted in New York.

It's a challenge creating shoes for a global market, Reed said. Most American feet are narrow and long. Italian women's feet are wider. Japanese women have tiny feet. He has to work with many different lasts (the wooden shape the shoes are molded on) and his sizes must run from 5 to 11. He said Hawai'i and Japan order more small sizes than anywhere else in the world.

Trend-spotting

While fashion trends may seem frivolous and spur-of-the-moment to the uninitiated, they are anything but. There's a science to predicting trends; nothing is left to chance.

Reed Evins said he doesn't wait to see what comes down the designer runways. "Accessories are always ahead of ready-to-wear clothing. I keep my ear to the all-important color and thread councils. Six months before even a textile is designed, there's a committee of people who meet in Europe to establish trends." The committee consists of representatives from tanneries and fabric mills.