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In my social media recently when I wrote about Goodyear welted shoes made without gemming – the canvas rib glued onto the insole which the welt is attached to – several people were surprised that there was such a thing. Albeit standard on factory-made Goodyear welted shoes is the use of gemming, there’s still a bunch who do it the old-school way where a holdfast is carved from the leather insole.
Pie crust stitching. Skin stitching. Raised lake. Reverse skin stitching. Split and lift. Round closing. And so on. The terms surrounding apron stitching and split toes are many, and they are often confused and used wrong. Here everything is hopefully straightened out and clarified in a good way.
Most are aware of the rather extensive use of adhesives when making footwear, also for traditionally constructed shoes. What one don’t discuss as much is how this use affect form and function of the shoes, which it indeed can do in many ways. Here’s an hopefully enlightening article on the topic.
In the field of quality footwear, there are some terms that can be a bit confusing and unclear, especially for those who have recently become interested in the topic. Here I go through several of them and try to clarify and explain.
Many people think that a shoe’s toe spring, the height of the tip of the toe above the ground, and the heel height only affect how the shoe feels when walking and its appearance. But it also has a bearing on how much the shoe needs to be bent when walking, which can ultimately affect how prominent the creases becomes. I’ll explain this more in detail, and delve deeper into these topics.
Articles continued:
Most rarely think about it, but in many cases there are practical, utilitarian reasons that shoes look the way they do nowadays, and we’ve been used to it and think it’s the right and beautiful way. Learn the historic functional reasons why we have derby shoes, a lot of brown shoes, built-up bevelled waists, natural sole edges on workwear boots and why rugged boots have high toe spring and sleek dress shoes low toe spring.
The Blake-stitched construction, or McKay as it’s also called, is the first construction method that seriously made it possible to industrialise shoe manufacturing. Here is the story of its emergence and development.
We live in an age where soft sneakers is the norm on people’s feet, and unfortunately this cushioning slowly seem to gain traction also in the classic shoe world. The problem is that our feet are not built to be walking around in that environment, and this risk leading to serious feet health issues.
From time to time I see big misconceptions on the waterproofing preferences of welted shoes, like how stitched rubber soles lead to water coming into the shoe or how closed channel leather soles are much more waterproof than open channel soles, and similar. This is wrong – here I explain why.
It’s one of the most common misconceptions in the world of quality footwear: that creases on the toe cap means something is wrong. That the shoes doesn’t fit, or are badly made, or other various explanations. In reality, it’s most likely nothing that’s wrong at all, just perfectly normal. Here I explain more.
