The word “handmade” and what it means when it comes to footwear has been through quite a journey the past hundred years or so. From referring only to expensive often hand welted shoes that are built more or less without any machines involved back in the days, to now be used for relatively cheap shoes that have all main parts made by large machines, hands solely guide the shoes through them. Here’s the history of how handmade has been devaluated through the years.
According to Cambridge Dictionary, the meaning of devaluation is: “the action of causing someone or something to be considered less valuable or important”. The word handmade is a good example of something that has seen this development take place as decades has passed by, and in the world of shoes it’s extra evident.
Note that the brands I use as examples in this article are just that, examples, for language reasons they are British or American and they are often famous brands since it’s easier to find old ads etc from these, but many many others do the same thing.
First, we have two words that for most means more or less the same thing: handmade and handcrafted. It’s interesting that if you research the terms, some descriptions define handmade as “more made by hand” than handcrafted, while some do it the other way around, but most commonly, they are equated. Here, we go by the latter. To continue to use Cambridge Dictionary’s definition: “handmade (also hand-crafted) – made by a person using just hands or tools, not by a machine”. Now note, this is the latest, current edition.
Say 200+ years ago, all shoes were completely handmade, always. But no one talked about “handmade shoes”, only the various construction methods were highlighted, if anything. But mainly, you set yourself apart by design, how the shoes looked (not much has changed in this regard). When machine-made shoes were introduced, during the second industrial revolution in the 1800’s, this was new and exciting, and in the beginning this was used in marketing as something positive. It was innovative and special – something that one strived for in this era.
Around the 1900’s there was sort of a transition phase, when both hand welted and Goodyear welted shoes, and hand stitched and machine stitched soles, were commonly offered. In ads and catalogues the words handmade and Goodyear stitched etc. was often used intertwined, it’s sometimes hard to know what was what. At the same time, many local cobblers still made simple hand pegged shoes for the poorer community. All was a bit more up in the air, so to speak.
Now we’re in the first half and middle of the 20th century, and it’s from this time that it’s easier to read books on the topic of shoemaking, find catalogues and advertisements to see how things were promoted back then, etc. Through the years I’ve read many old books, looked through loads of vintage catalogues and seen hundreds of historic ads, and for this article I’ve spent a lot of time researching to find examples. Although there are exceptions, as there always are, what one can say for certain is that the term “handmade” was generally used differently back then.
When you look at how brands and manufacturers marketed their shoes during the vast part of the 1900’s, there sure were a lot of fluffy, fine words and hyping ones products, of course. One also surely liked to talk about handmade, it was without a doubt a strong selling point again. But, one normally only used handmade when one talked about cutting leathers by hand, or stitching parts of the uppers by hand, and things like that. Or, if one actually did hand welted footwear, which also some bigger brands still offered along Goodyear welted shoes. The parts made by machine, like the lasting, Goodyear welt stitching, outsole stitching and so on, one promoted as “highly skilled craftsmanship” and other nice sounding things, but one wouldn’t talk about these steps as handmade or handcrafted.
Although seen occasionally before, it’s when we’ve reached the 90’s that it seems to be getting more common that makers of Goodyear welted shoes go over to call their shoes handmade. It’s hard to say why this route becomes more popular, but it seem to be just a classic case of feeling that one had to push further in the description of ones products to stand out against others. Maybe the term Goodyear welted had become less known for the common man, and it was harder to get the right associations for a wider audience, so one needed to go another step, even if the same companies had avoided to call the same products made the same way handmade a few decades earlier.
The past couple of decades, it’s been very common that Goodyear welted shoes are called “handmade shoes” by those who manufacture or sell them, and hence also customers commonly use this term. One could argue that there’s no problem with that, why should one care? Well, the main issue is for those who actually make handmade shoes. Bespoke shoemakers can still call their shoes bespoke as a better distinction (although as mentioned in the comments, also this word is seeing a devaluation taking place), but all RTW and MTO brands offering hand lasted, hand welted and perhaps also hand stitched outsoles, what should they call their shoes? “Super mega handmade”? I’ve had talks with several frustrated people who work with this type of shoes who have a hard time to explain to customers who aren’t well-informed why their shoes cost much more than other supposedly handmade shoes.
In recent years, we’ve seen the term handmade go even further. Blake stitched shoes are commonly called handmade, cemented sneakers that one want to add a premium touch to are referred to as handcrafted, and so on. It’s a bit ironic, that the makers of Goodyear welted shoes, a surely complicated shoe construction relative most others, who sort of begun the devaluation of the term, could soon have challenges explaining to their customers what makes their shoes superior in terms of workmanship going into them and durability to a cheaper Blake stitched or simply cemented shoe which is marketed with exactly the same words. Not least since everyone offering shoes from €100 and upwards also commonly claim using “the world’s finest leathers”, that it’s “100-200 steps” that “take eight weeks to complete” (read about the actual time it takes to make welted shoes in this article), and similar.
The devaluation of the word handmade has not only taken place within shoemaking though, it goes for many product segments. That said, one interesting analogy is clothing, where one haven’t talked about handmade in the same sense as in the shoe world, even if it’s a neighbouring industry and all clothing are – by todays measures in the footwear industry – just as “handmade”. One use machines, mainly sewing machines obviously, which people use their hands to run the product through, and plenty of steps are made by hand with various tools along the whole process (note that barely no clothing and no footwear, of any kind and in any price range, are made by big robots, where it starts on one end of a conveyor belt and run through machines and comes out as a finished product on the other end, or similar, also for the cheapest it’s human hands working together with machines). But in clothing, the word handmade is still today almost only used for hand knitted items or for example really exclusive jackets with many hand stitched processes.
A fashion or shoe historian might be able to answer why we see this difference better than me. And also answer better on why the devaluation of handmade and handcrafted has taken place within footwear. That this development is a fact is not up for discussion though. Words are losing its meaning.
Very interesting read! Love to see all these old shoe ads
‘Hand-made’, ‘Hand-crafted’, ‘Artisanal-build’….you could wax lyrical all day long about how the human hand has transformed a piece of calf skin into a beautifully well-fitted shoe. To classic men’s shoe appreciators, this is clearly totally erroneous notion. Justin Fitzpatrick has beef (rightly) with the terms used to to describe Goodyear welted shoes. I will say, average-guy-in-the-street doesn’t know or care too much about it; that said, the shoemakers should not have the licence to talk about ‘hand-made’ they way they do! Might the CEO of Loake, or the owner of Crockett and Jones have a meeting with the marketing department to firm up the terms used to describe their products? Maybe not.
Love the old ads btw 🙂 Would certainly like them as posters to display in the house!
Regards
Tony
This has long been a bugbear of ours. We adopted the word “handsewn” to distinguish our way of making shoes.
I think a similar process is happening with the word bespoke – it is used describe all sorts of shoes which have no form of customisation these days
Gary McCloud: Thank you!
Anthony Jones: I think by now we’ve gone passed the point of no return for Goodyear welted shoes, even if the big players would stop calling their shoes “handmade”. Yeah many of the ads are lovely!
James Ducker: Right, handsewn can be a good “new” word to use. True about bespoke, I guess especially for shoes normally called Made to Order have started being called bespoke in recent years.
Well explained and very informative article. Thanks for sharing.
Hammad Qadir: Cheers!
Great analysis! Thank you! And the posters are just great! How did you find them?
As regards the topic, it is indeed frustrating that so many shoes are now called handmande when they are actually not. For instance, we now have all those Asian shoemakers who supposedly make handmade shoes for a bargain but you cannot trust this anymore due to other makers marketing campaigns where everything is called handmade and the price is 2-3 times higher.
On the same token, do you see a difference between handmade and handcrafted? For instance, G&G market their shoes (I think RTW included) as handcrafted and not handmade.
Tadas: Thank you! Yeah many are disappointed that we are where we are today.
On handmade vs handcrafted, read the second paragraph of the article 🙂
Apparently I concentrated on the ads too much! I will have to read it again which will be a pleasure!
The only affordable and truly handmade shoes in Spain, are made in Fuensalida (Toledo) Little factories that produces kiowa shoes, like Rancourt or Yuketen, hand lasted, and hand stitched. It’s popular a fine stitched apron, called “entrecarne” . Shoes are usually made in corrected leathers, Florantic and Rois (this leather is used by Church’s) produced by Picusa in Galicia.