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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.
Wataru Shimamoto, the masterful Japanese shoemaker behind the brand Orma Shoemaker, is an inspiring figure in the world of bespoke footwear. With a background at Il Micio in Italy, he’s now back in Japan since some years carving out a niche for himself in the competitive landscape of shoemaking, culminating in his victory at the World Championships of Shoemaking in 2022.
The Japanese shoemaker Kiichiro Ozeki has a background at Hiro Yanagimachi and Gaziano & Girling, but now he introduces his own bespoke shoe brand Fig. A new challenge where he for the first time will do all the steps himself, not only his famous bottom making, but also lasts and upper making. Fig now does its first trunk show in Japan.
The Japanese shoe shine bar chain and shoe care brand Brift H, founded by the first world champion of shoe shining Yuya Hasegawa, is now part of the Japanese high-end fashion giant United Arrows. A great journey that started with Yuya being a street shoe shiner, and a testament to the importance the shoe shine industry has, not least in Japan.
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.
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This beautiful chelsea boot by the previous world champion of shoemaking, Wataru Shimamoto of Orma Shoemaker, is made in a very special Japanese leather called Shironameshi, made with an over 1,000 years old tanning technique, that use only salt and rapeseed oil.
They are seen as the most well-made and exclusive workwear boots in the world, with a current waiting time of six years. The mythical Japanese bootmaker Show Goto only makes twelve pairs of his handmade White Kloud boots a year, plus limited runs of the more basic Jack & White Bros boots. Shoegazing has visited him.
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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.
I’m currently in Japan, and one of the highlights this far was picking up my fourth pair from the bespoke shoemaker Eiji Murata, alias Main d’Or. An exquisite pair of split toe derbies in a medium brown embossed grain leather, made to the same extremely high standard as he’s known for.
