My latest new pair is a bespoke seamless faux adelaide in a lovely medium brown suede, made by Catella Shoemaker. Shoes made to the absolute highest level possible. In this article there’s loads of photos as well as films of both the making and the final pair.
As Shoegazing readers likely know by now, Catella Shoemaker is the brand of the 2019 shoemaking world champion Daniel Wegan. A fellow Swede who moved to England and Kettering in Northampton some 15 years ago, where he eventually became the manager of Gaziano & Girling’s bespoke department. After a number of years there he left to start his own venture about six years ago, Catella. A well established brand by now, which Daniel runs together with Sam Norsworthy who do upper making, patina and shine.
In recent years they’ve been so busy that they don’t really update their Instagram much and don’t even have a website yet. But they do still take orders and Daniel regularly do trunk shows in various cities in USA, meets clients in London, and occasionally in other places as well including Sweden.
Last year I visited Catella’s new workshop space in Kettering, which is a big place in the central part of the town. Two floors, with storage and lastmaking on the bottom floor, and upper making, bottom making and finishing together with an office on the top floor. A great place.
The new pair is a special one. It’s a seamless wholecut, which means that one pull a piece of leather over the last and carefully remove all wrinkles and excess. Then when that piece is fully “blocked”, one cut the opening and normally continue as usual with the lining etc. Here, I wanted a faux adelaide pattern, so basically one simulates this with stitching and punching. To get all this right on a single piece leather raise the difficulty level another step.
Starting off.
The lasting process of the upper piece has started. All the first photos here are taken by Sam Norsworthy or Daniel Wegan.
Both experience and a feel for the leather is needed to get seamless lasting right.
A bit further into the process.
Done.
Here the opening is cut.
Here’s a video showing a short part of the lasting.
The leather used here of course needs to be of absolute top quality. For this pair Zonta’s full reverse calf suede Castorino is used, in the lovely medium brown shade French brown. When one do a faux pattern on suede as done here, one need to use contrasting stitching to make the pattern visible. Together with laces in the same colour, one get a more casual feel of the shoe, which came out really great I think.
As always with Catella, the making is world-class. From the finely tuned decorative upper stitching to the perfectly aligned heel lifts. The subtly impeccable finishing, the super clean 15 spi (stitches per inch) sole stitch, the very slim yet balanced rounded waist. And so on.
Different threads so I could choose which colour I preferred.
Here the upper making has been finished.
Welts attached.
Sole stitching as tight as 15 spi takes a lot of time.
Hero shot.
Close-up.
Heel building.
The shoes are more or less finished, and the shoe trees from Hervé Brunelle have been made.
Removing the upper protection.
Part of the bottom making filmed by Sam Norsworthy:
The fit is basically perfected now, so not much to say there. I think these are shoes I will be wearing quite a lot. I often dress a bit more casually now, where this style will be perfect, and love the combo between the more casually styled upper with the traditional dress shoe sole and heel.
We finish off this article with a bunch of images of the finished pair. No need for captions here, the pictures will speak for themselves.
Very beautiful! I really like the contrasting stitching on the uppers. Exquisitely made. Although I don’t have bespoke footwear of that calibre/quality, I’m enjoying my suede shoes at the moment. I only need to wear my suede shoes and most people think I’m dressed to the nines! The Trunk Show in London was a fun day out.
Best
Anthony
Impressive pair of shoes. Enjoy!
Anthony and Juan Manuel: Thanks a lot! Will enjoy them indeed.
Love when you get to see the making behind the pair as well!
John: Cheers, glad you think so! Kudos to Daniel and Sam for taking the time to capture it.
Impressive indeed, congratulations! Any plans for a next pair with Daniel?
Also, what is the turnaround time for a new customer, you’d say?
Somewhere between 2017 and 2019 I was on the verge of going the bespoke route with Daniel. I had met him at the tailor shop of Chittleborough & Morgan some years before, when G&G where having a sales corner there. I made two attempts at the new G&G shop in London. Two shopkeepers told me subsequently and independently of each other that there was no reason to choose bespoke if one’s feet are normal. Their fitting shoe fitted my wider feet perfectly indeed. What then followed were three mediocre pairs of MTO. Problems with the pinky toe and a too loose heel on one of the shoes. G&G gave me super service and did everything to make things right. They even had the first MTO pair produced a 2nd time. Despite all those efforts my old Crockett & Jones shoes still fit better than these three MTO pairs. Even today, I am surprised why G&G put its own bespoke department in the background back then and certainly did not promote it in their shop in London.
Bård: Thanks a lot! Yes, looking at doing something even more casual next. Unfortunately, it’s long. 2-3 years at the moment. They are popular.
Know that G&G had some challenges with the bespoke workshop for a while when they lost some staff (Daniel starting his own, Kichiro not getting prolonged work visa so went back to Japan, etc.). So can imagine they didn’t push bespoke much during that time. But now they have had new people in for a while and should be running smoothly.
Fit of RTW and MTO isn’t really comparable to bespoke, there it’s all about how the base lasts fits your feet. A bit weird that test shoes fit differently to the final ones though, but good they did all they could to try to work things out!