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If you are in the fortunate situation to be on the verge of ordering a first pair of bespoke shoes, there’s a lot of things that can help you in your way to achieve a good result. In this post I guide you through what to think about, both for traditional full bespoke and Made to Measure orders, but also if you do it over distance, which is increasingly common.
Traditionally constructed good quality shoes have a long lifespan, which means that it’s a product that are commonly sold second hand. Looking for used classic shoes can lead to awesome bargains, but also expensive mistakes. Here’s a guide on what to think about when buying used shoes, and where to find them.
One of the most interesting new brands that’s been introduced lately is Acme Shoemaker. Based in Beijing, they are a serious contender to making the finest RTW shoes in the world, and also offer MTO, MTM and full bespoke, all at very competitive prices. Here’s a substantial buyer’s guide to the brand, with an MTM order I’ve done as base.
Here’s an updated version of one of the most popular articles on Shoegazing. A comprehensive list with quality shoes for under €300 / $340, now with current prices almost 60 brands of mainly welted shoes from all over the world.
There’s many countries in the world who has a quite large production of quality welted footwear, yet still fly under the radar for most. One of these is Indonesia. In this article I go through a number of the interesting makers, of which a majority use hand welted construction, still with prices starting at below €200.
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Eiji Murata, the man behind the brand Main d’Or, is one of the highest rated bespoke shoe makers in the world among people in industry, but still relatively unknown to most shoe interested people. Here’s a substantial buyer’s guide with an order of a pair of semi brogues as a base, where most of what you need to know about Main d’Or is included, among other things lots of pictures from the making.
For those who want to get an overview of the prices among different manufacturers of bespoke shoes, a lot of research is needed. Until today. Here’s a substantial compilation of the prices of around 50 bespoke shoemakers around the world.
Yohei Fukuda is one of the most acclaimed Japanese bespoke shoemakers today, and many shoe interested men have drooled over his pictures in various social media etc. Including myself. Now I also got to experience them in reality, here’s a buyer’s guide to the brand with my order of a pair of full brogues as framework.
An online giant’s own quality footwear brand, the cheapest of the Hungarian manufacturers of fully handmade shoes, and a British Frenchman, that’s what is offered in today’s three outsiders post.
Hiro Yanagimachi is one of the pioneers of the new wave of Japanese bespoke shoemakers which established themselves in the last 15 years. He offers MTO, MTM/semi bespoke and full bespoke, and with a newly developed international last and planned visits to Europe and the US, he is one of the Japanese makers who is of the most interest for us over here. I give you a large buyer’s guide to the brand, with a pair of MTO split toe derbies that I ordered as a framework.
