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There’s been many thousands of iterations of the plain toe derby made throughout the years, and of these I’ve seen hundreds. A lot of lovely ones of course. But question is if this one here by last year’s shoemaking world champion Ken Hishinuma of Khish the Work isn’t the one to rule them all, in my book.
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Feels like it was just a few days ago that I wrote this post last year, but here we are again. A year is about to end, a new one is coming. A post from my new year’s celebration preparations, and a brief summary of what have been and an look into the future.
Christmas is a time for traditions, and one such is sharing the yearly shoe Christmas photo here on Shoegazing. This year me and my wife have gathered large parts of both our families in our house here in Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast, so it’s been hectic but lovely (we Swedes celebrate on Christmas eve). On my feet I’ve had my bespoke Yohei Fukuda special adelaide oxfords.
The amount of brands doing classic shoes have grown significantly in recent years, after several decades of decline. This means that also more niche types get more and more options. Brands doing retro styled stuff with spade soles, double rows of stitching, and things like that. Now enthusiasts who like these styles have much more to choose from than finding old original vintage shoes.
More or less all sports shoes today are various versions of sneakers. It makes sense, they have been for a long time, and when it comes to function and performance it’s suitable. With golf shoes, it’s a different thing though, it’s essentially walking shoes. Yet almost all golf shoes today are made similarly to other sports shoes, instead of how they were made up until the 80’s or so with proper Goodyear welted constructions. There are exceptions though, luckily.
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Shoes are made in pairs, that’s been the case throughout history. As such, they are expected to look the same as each other. Even the cheapest shoes have rather high demands of a sync between each other, and then of course the higher the price the higher the demand. For a pair of really expensive bespoke shoes it’s expected that they are more or less identical down to the smallest detail.
Normally box calf leather is associated with a nice shiny finish, but one can also do box calf in an almost matte finish. This was more common back in the days, which this pair of bespoke Yohei Fukuda made in a vintage Ilcea leather is evident of.
To make a well-executed contrasting sole stitch is an artform. Normally, you either darken the entire sole edge and seam, or you leave all natural coloured. When one do it the middle way and darken the edge and part of the welt but leave the stitching light coloured, it’s tricky to make it neat looking – which makes it all the more lovely when achieved well.
Usually exotics aren’t really my thing, but this exquisite vintage lizard leather in a subtle dark brown really spoke to me. The pair is made by the Italian shoemaker Calzoleria Carlino, who currently runs a campaign with no upcharge on orders of lizard leather for their MTO, MTM or bespoke.
Even if I mainly show off my various welted shoes here on the blog or in social media, I of course have a bunch of other footwear as well, like sidewall stitched sneakers, Blake stitched Belgian loafers or – as pictured here – Sidewall stitched casual shoes. The soft suede and crepe rubber sole makes them really comfortable and suitable for many informal occasions.
