Buying tip – Winson x Tanakajakkuten Grit Dress collection

The Indonesian shoemaker Winson and the Japanese men’s shoe store Tanakajakkuten has collaborated on small fully handmade RTW range that combines dress and rugged in a really lovely way. Unique designs, superb craftsmanship, and really wearable and interesting shoes is the result.

Winson is one of the most famous and praised shoe brands coming out of Indonesia, that creates fine premium hand welted, fully handmade MTO and MTM shoes, and through some retailers also small exclusive RTW offers (listen to Emil Rahmana Putra, founder of Winson and the sibling workwear boot brand Midas in this episode of the Sheogazing Podcast). Tanakajakkuten is a small specialised men’s shoe store based in Osaka, Japan (I thought it was a Finnish store when I first heard about them a bunch of years ago, since the name really sounds like it should be). They sell shoes from TLB Mallorca, Saint Crispin’s and Winson Shoemaker. They also have an online shop, even though it’s only in Japanese, you can use your browser to translate it.

Dr. Sole Supergrip soles, more commonly found on workwear boot styles and similar. The Winson x Tanakajakkuten Grit Dress collection all av have versions of this.

Tanakajakkuten develop many shoe styles together with the brands they work with. With Winson, they’ve introduced what they call the Grit Dress collection, where they merge a rugged style with elegant dressy in several really different and often unique looking styles. All are made with fine European leathers to a really high quality level, hand lasted with handmade sole stitch, which is impressive given the shoes here are rubber soles. They either have Dr. Sole Supergrip half rubber soles or Supergrip full rubber soles, with Dr. Sole’s full rubber top pieces of the heels. These are woodsman / logger heels, with a concave shape and wide edge towards the upper.

Cool grain derby style, with half rubber sole and woodsman heel.

The models on offer are some really cool ones. For example a medium brown lineman derby (think sort of a bowling shoe), a special black longwing derby, a longwing tassel loafer, a black oxford with special contrasting toe cap stitching, etc. Often with a soft chiseled square toe that enhance the contrast to the sole, in a similar way to the more common Commando lug sole styles, but in a more personal way.

Brilliantly designed style. I love the way they have an open derby lacing, but placed so tightly with many lace holes to more resemble and oxford. Plus the rounded edge at the bottom of the facing as the icing on the cake.

They cost about €1,000 / $1,200 (85,000 JPY) including lasted shoe trees, which for the quality level is a really good price. It’s very small batches though, only the three just recently launched models have more sizes available. Their website only ship domestically, but customers abroad are welcome to email them at info@tanakajakkuten.com or fill in the contact form on the site, and they will assist with purchasing.

Not your everyday tassel loafer.

Apron derby with Norwegian stitching.

Full Dr. Sole Supergrip bottom.

Black oxford with contrasting stiching. I look forward to see what more styles will come out of this collab in the future. All pictures: Tanakajakkuten