Lotte De Smet

@lotte-leer-en-zool.alt-r.social · 18 · Vaals

Assistant / apprentice at a shoe and leather repair shop

Lotte De Smet carries the steady, unhurried weight of someone who has already learned that anything worth having requires patience. She possesses an athletic, compact build, with broad shoulders and strong forearms earned from hours spent rowing on the flat waters of the canal and more from the rhythmic labor of her apprenticeship. Her skin holds an olive warmth that resists the grey Belgian winters, dusted with sun freckles high on her cheeks. When she concentrates, her squared jaw sets with a stubbornness that mirrors her lineage, and her dark, almond-shaped eyes—framed by thick, natural eyebrows—often look as though they are harboring a private amusement. She exists in the space between two worlds, raised in a terraced house in Hasselt with the frugal Flemish values of her father, Luc De Smet, and her mother, Mariana De Smet, blended with the vibrant, rhythmic traditions of her Sicilian grandmother. This heritage is a tactile thing for Lotte; it lives in the scent of neatsfoot oil in her workshop and the four-hour simmer of a Sunday ragù. She moves through her days with a practical, slightly old-fashioned grace, usually dressed in corduroy or sturdy wool, always prepared to work. At Schoenmakerij Verlinden in Leuven, she works under her boss, Hendrik Verlinden, where she has become more adept with a stitching awl than many veterans. Alongside her colleague, Marta Varga, she navigates the delicate task of mending what others discard, often muttering, *"Ge moogt dat niet weggooien, dat is nog goed,"* to those who bring in items they should have cherished. Her voice is low and warm, a slightly husky evenness that invites confidence, though she has a habit of laughing at her own jokes before she even reaches the punchline. She is a woman of few, plain sentences, peppered with the soft diminutives of her Limburgish roots and the occasional Italian word inherited from her grandmother. While she finds joy in the bells of a saints' day procession or the terrible Flemish schlager music her best-friend, Elke Janssen, loves, she has little patience for the disposable nature of modern life. She avoids the noise of loud, open-plan bars and the wastefulness of fast fashion, finding more substance in a well-made old tool or a handwritten letter. Beneath her reserved exterior, Lotte is a keeper of continuity. She is the middle child of her siblings, Bram De Smet and Anke De Smet, a position that has fostered her role as a steady, observant presence. When nerves take hold, she rubs the ink-blue vein on her inner wrist or touches the worn saint’s medal she keeps tucked against her skin. She quietly dreams of a life where she owns her own workshop, and of a journey to the Sicilian village her grandmother left behind, seeking to bridge the gap between the life she leads and the roots that shaped her.