During the pandemic few people wore or ordered bespoke shoes – so what to do as a bespoke shoemaker? In Hiro Yanagimachi’s workshop in Tokyo, they spent the calm period to develop a completely new product for the new world: the hand welted LS1 sneaker. Built to merge the best from handmade dress shoes and casual sneakers – which has since been a smashing success.
In December 2019, reports came from the city of Wuhan, China, that people had became ill in a new type of virus disease. It spread to other parts of mainland China, in early 2020 reports of people infected started coming from Iran and Italy, and from then there was no turning back. The Covid-19 pandemic had the world in its grip for a couple of years and turned everyday life upside down for most people on the planet.
In Japan, the first lockdown for among others the Tokyo area was initiated on April 7. Here, as in most other parts of the world, people lived completely different lives to normal for a long time. One didn’t go to work but stayed at home, office employed wore completely different clothes and shoes. If the sneakers were taking over more and more already before the pandemic, they now got an even steadier grip.
Uppers for sneakers finished, waiting for bottoming.
Here the welt has been attached. As you can see, it looks just the same way as their full bespoke classic shoes.
For bespoke shoemakers, where most focus on more formal types of footwear, the lockdowns and world in a pandemic obviously completely changed things. They couldn’t meet customers, and most weren’t after new formal shoes anyway, so orders for most plunged. Some were fortunate to have large backlogs of orders to go through, but most makers soon had very little work. I bet more bespoke samples were made in 2020-2021 than the whole two previous decades.
For the Hiro Yanagimachi workshop, even if they had a backlog to work through, being a large workshop with many in-house employees (apart from Hiro they have Konomi Morii (formerly Egawa), Nobuko Kuwahara, Yuko Ishihara and Tomoko Saegusa, some full time some part time), they quickly understood that they would have time over. They had started looking at developing a sneakers model already before the pandemic hit, and now, they had time to really work on this project.
– This is a product for people who are used to wearing classic shoes of excellent quality, and wants sneakers made to the same level, says Hiro Yanagimachi.
The midsole has been built, with outsoles being the next step.
The layers of the midsole roughly sanded.
An LS1 sneaker with the outsole attached, with finishing being the next step.
The first sample of the LS1 (short for Luxury Sneaker 1) model was shown on their Instagram in November 2020, and after doing a number of testings on both men and women, it was finally launched as an MTO product in 2021. They are made with the same materials and initially in the exact same way as their dress shoes, they have the same leather heel stiffeners and excellent arch support, and are built with a traditional hand welted construction. It’s after the welt and thin cork footbed are in place that things change. Here, they build a wedge sole with several layers of lightweight rubber, and then have a grippy, durable Vibram outsole at the bottom.
These are sneakers that will just last as long as your regular hand welted dress shoes.
– The hand welted construction gives the same possibility for repairs and resoles, and we’ve designed the uppers so that the padded top line section can be exchanged, Hiro Yanagimachi says.
The way this top line part is designed is mesmerising for a shoe nerd like me. When you look at the shoes there’s nothing that points to it being made for any particular practical reason, but looking up-close you see the well-thought trough design and techniques used for it to be easily exchangeable. Just brilliant footwear design.
Finished. A highly wearable absolute top quality piece of footwear.
This top part, the 1,5 cm or so with padding along the top line, can be exchanged to a completely new one if it gets worn out some years down the road.
The finished edge where one see the layers more clearly.
Inside is also the same as on their regular classic shoes, where standard is a half sock lining with padding under. One can choose fully padded if one want more cushioning.
And design and pattern certainly is an area where Hiro Yanagimachi excels (no wonder they placed in top three of the Pattern category in the Shoegazing Bespoke Awards). Another brilliant part of the LS1 sneaker is the endless options of colour customisation one has. Given that you have the upper, the welt, the rubber midsole and the outsole to play with, and they are all produced Made to Order, you can tweak things perfectly to your taste. Do a tone-on-tone one, or go the opposite with stark contrasts, and anything in between. Price is €850 excl. VAT (132 000 yen), and delivery time is around three months. More info about the LS1 sneakers can be found here.
Lovely swatches to give the best possible view of all the options available. These are like 15 cm long, mini flat versions of the upper and soles.
Me trying out a pair. Very tempted to get one, though haven’t ordered yet.
They have since before a similar set-up with house slippers, but of course the sneakers are a wider product that suited perfectly during and after the pandemic.
– It was meant as a new challenge for us, but has become one of our most important offerings. The response from customers on the LS1 has been incredible, and people who buy them love them and use them a lot, Hiro Yanagimachi says.
It’s not like they will stop doing their classic shoes, but to widen the scope and offer people who appreciate the craft and the quality of those something that can suit how they more often dress today, that can’t be a bad thing.
Some finished LS1 samples.
Another part of the showroom, with more classic stuff, though as you can see a good versatility of types of models.
