Aristocrats Society is a Swedish / Monaco based brand focusing on fine Albert slippers made in Portugal. Now the brand is closing down their business, and the online store Pete & Harry sell off all remaining stock, with over 500 pairs offered at a 60-70% discount.
We can now announce the finalists in the two prestigious world championships contests, with finals taking place at the London Super Trunk Show on May 10. We’ll have two Japanese and a Brit going head to head in the shine final, and two Frenchmen and a Swiss to battle it out for the patina title. See their submissions here.
Last week the Japanese public broadcasting company’s international TV channel, NHK World Japan, aired an episode of the lifestyle programme Japanology Plus with focus on leather shoes. Here they met bespoke shoemakers like Shoji Kawaguchi of Marquess and Noriyuki Misawa, who also make art shoes, visited a shoemaking school and got shoes shined by Yuya Hasegawa of Brift H. The episode is in English and can be viewed for free online.
I can understand that it’s tempting to just throw dirty shoes in a washing machine on a gentle cycle, get them out looking much cleaner and think all is good. At least more and more people are doing it nowadays, especially with sneakers and similar. Problem is that shoes are not built to go through the stress that a machine wash incur and you’ll risk damaging them in several ways, and significantly shorten their lifespan. Learn why in this article.
The major shoe event in London returns for its seventh edition on Saturday, May 10. The event will feature 14 shoe and menswear companies from around the world, a free shoe shining service, a mirror shine masterclass, the new Super Trunk Sweepstake raffle with great prizes, the finals of the World Championships of Shoe Shining, Shoe Patina, and Shoemaking, and more. Below you’ll find all the details about the day.
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This is a special one. Northampton Shoe Museum’s archive gathers some of the most amazing pieces of footwear in history, and especially unique is their collection of exhibition and contest shoes from the 1800’s. Shoegazing has been given exclusive access to photograph and share these remarkable footwear widely for the first time ever.
I’ve done a few of these articles, highlighting three brands that are relatively unknown to the masses, either for being very new or for other reasons. This time it’s the Japanese MTO brand Lightbulb, the established Chinese brand Twinkima.G who now seem to start looking more internationally as well, and former Cleverley head lastmaker Adam Law’s own bespoke brand.
In a factory basically all brogueing is done with machines, done in a similar fashion as sewing machine basically. Most bespoke shoemakers do this by hand instead, punch every hole (or pair of holes in the case of the small ones) one by one. Here it’s done in the workshop of Catella.
This article is as much for customers as it’s for retailers and brands, who in too many cases overcomplicate the process of measuring feet. Given the few data points one have to work with when selling shoes online, it’s important that you get the ones you have exactly right. The use of pencils, papers, outlines and so on are only adding steps that can go wrong. Here’s how one should do it.
There’s been many thousands of iterations of the plain toe derby made throughout the years, and of these I’ve seen hundreds. A lot of lovely ones of course. But question is if this one here by last year’s shoemaking world champion Ken Hishinuma of Khish the Work isn’t the one to rule them all, in my book.
