The Beverly Hills Shoe Girl Who Still Knows Every Customer's Name

Elyse Walker has spent decades turning a childhood behind the counter of her family's shoe store into eight stores of her own, and in a new conversation with WWD, the Los Angeles retail veteran traces that same instinct for customer relationships through the hardest test of her career: rebuilding after the Pacific Palisades fire. It is the kind of loyalty that does not show up on a spreadsheet — knowing what a customer wants before she asks — and Walker credits it as the throughline from the shop floor of her youth to the stores she runs today.

With reporting from WWD.