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“I’m constantly challenging myself; change it, change it, change it. I’m honoring the past and making it modern. It’s better than a postcard from Gloversville.” shape. Moving on to work with designers including Geoffry Beene, Paul Smith, Dries Van Noten and Alexander McQueen, among others, he was always conscious of the work that he was leaving behind to inspire and educate others. Storto’s career making clothing for the hands expanded into creating objects that display the distinctive story and point of view of the artist. Museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art have even included Storto’s gloves in their permanent collections.
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“Here I am, making gloves for all these years, but I wasn’t a glove maker at all,” Storto said he learned, once he moved into Gloversville, which was once the epicenter of American glove production. “It was the tools that they have, my mind was going crazy. This is my Disneyland.”
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Visitors come to the beautifully curated Victorian Schine Building, a former opera house, where his studio is now located, to view the sacred tools on display and to see Storto demonstrate using them. “People come into the shop and say, ‘This belongs in New York City’, because it has that element to it. It just doesn’t fit in and that’s the beauty of it.”
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“It’s not Gloves-R-Us,” said Storto. Still making everything he carries from the ready-to-wear to the haute couture in an array of designs, fabrics and price ranges, Storto offers lambskin leather gloves starting at just $25 and goes all the way up to the alligator, crocodile and leather gloves that are priced into the thousands.
70 | Simply Saratoga | SPRING 2014 saratogaTODAYnewspaper.com