An episode with the 2018 world champion in shoemaking, Patrick Frei, whose amazingly well-made shoes are instantly recognisable with a personal character. Hear him talk about how one go about to find an own identity as a shoemaker or shoe designer, and loads more, like how he sees shoemaking as “The King of all Crafts” and how anyone doing anything first should look back to see how things has been done before, to just name a couple of examples.
In episode 20 of the podcast you’ll get to meet the very charismatic bespoke shoemaker Patrick Frei from Germany. He made a name of himself more widely when he won the World Championships in Shoemaking in 2018, and is seen by many as one of the greatest shoemakers around today. He works out of his workshop in Freiburg in Southwest of Germany, together with his shoemaking partner Kazuya Kimura. For those of you who have seen shoes made by the Patrick Frei workshop, you’ll know they have a distinct personal character, an originality and identity one can’t find anywhere else.
Patrick Frei.
How one achieves this is one of the main topics of our conversation, but we also we talk about his rather special way into shoemaking sort of through juggling on the streets of South America, about his interesting approach on lastmaking, about the balance between tradition and playfulness, about his obsession with small details, and much more.
Listen to the episode below, or in your preferred podcast player. All episodes of the Shoegazing Podcast can be found here. If you like the podcast, please give it a good rating or comment in your podcast player.
For more about Patrick Frei, for example the first parts following my bespoke order from him, see here.
What a great talk! Really enjoyed the listen, so many interesting views on things. Thanks!
John B: Thanks a lot! Yeah, Patrick is great to talk to.