Buying tip – Crown Northampton’s new handmade sneakers

The British brand Crown Northampton is known for their quality sneakers that especially stands out due to the great materials they use throughout their shoes. Now they’ve launched the new model Ernest which is a really interesting sneaker with a specially designed upper and a unique construction that includes a hand welted seam and a handmade sole stitch.

Even if the UK is most known for their factories making Goodyear welted men’s shoes, there’s a bunch of other shoe manufacturers around, and given the heritage and also relatively high salaries in the country it’s mainly various relatively high-end footwear. That goes for the sneakers brands like Goral and Crown Northampton as well, who’ve been featured in my articles on quality sneakers here on the blog before. The latter is known for their sidewall stitched sneakers with oak bark tanned leather lasting boards, real leather heel stiffeners, often Horween leathers including shell cordovan offerings, etc.

Now they introduce a new real top range sneaker model that they call Ernest. This is a properly handmade sneaker. The upper is a wholecut design, pretty special, which is of actual one piece where the overlap is stitched with thick hand stitched leathers, and machine stitched along the top line together with the lining. Veg tanned Baker leathers are used as upper leathers, so rather thick stuff.

Upper assembly of the new model.

The construction is initially built as a traditional classic hand welted shoe, with a channel carved out of a thick leather insole and then the welt seam is stitched by hand, but a much wider welt is used and below this is a second welt, or rand, with the grain side facing outwards. A foam layer over the back half and cork filling over everything is added on the insole, over this a leather midsole, and then the outer placed welt is folded over the welt seam and down over the midsole and pinned to this.

Hand welting. Here it looks more like a norvegese seam is made, before the outer welt is folded down.

A Lactae Hevea rubber sole is attached, a channel carved in this, and then a handmade sole stitch is done through the rubber outsole, edge of the midsole and the welt. The upper second welt is sidewall stitched to the upper, which isn’t really structural just cosmetic, likely to get a design that resembles more common sidewall stitched sneakers more. Given that it’s an advanced construction, no surprise price is hefty, at €1,500 (£1,300), though honestly for the amount of handwork involved I’d expect it to be higher.

Here the welt placed on top is stitched to the rubber sole. The other welt that goes up and is sidewall stitched to the upper.

It’s a really intricate and interesting construction that they’ve developed, and at least I’ve never seen anything like it. Also cool that they’ve made a different type of upper design for it as well, really going all the way with making something different. We’ve seen some of these stuff in recent years – of course driven by the constantly increasing popularity of sneakers – where one use traditional techniques to develop new or tweaked ways to do sneakers and other casual shoes, and hopefully more will come. The best ones will then prevail. Good quality footwear will always be good quality footwear, no matter what style they are.

Unique style that looks quite cool.

The Ernest model is available in four different colours, and one can also order them with a box including shoe care products. All pictures: Crown Northampton

Here’s a film showcasing the making that can give you a better idea of the construction method, albeit it can be a bit confusing in some cases since the timeline isn’t fully following the actual steps at all times.