Tag
A major advantage of welted shoes is that they can be easily resoled, but a worn-out sole is just one of many repairs that can be made to your shoes. Here we look at some of the most common types of wear and tear that occur and explain all the cases where it’s perfectly possible to repair your shoes – and the few cases where it’s not.
Wearing down the heel lining is a common issue, especially if it’s loafers or other shoes where you tend to have a bit of heel slippage going and which you might wear barefoot as well, which increases friction. The simplest solution to this is attaching these self-adhesive shoe repair patches.
Not fixing worn parts of your shoes in time is very common, which can result in a backlash with a much more expensive repair than necessary. One concrete such example is not replacing the heel top piece in time.
Traditionally constructed shoes, not least stitched ones, are almost always marketed with emphasis on the possibilities of resoling and repairing them. It often appears that they can be resoled forever. It’s not that simple, though. Here I go through the possibilities and shortcomings of the most common construction methods, as well as the conditions for re-heeling and resoling.
In basically all shoe factories I’ve visited there’s a couple of trolleys with ongoing resole jobs. Customers who have sent in their well-used Goodyear-welted shoes to be repaired and made nice again. The picture above is from John Lobb Paris where a shoe has been taken down to their literally innermost constituents, soon to be rebuilt.
