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One of the best things of working with various shoemakers and order shoes in person with them, is the actual order process. Where you try on potential test shoes, maybe have your feet measured and decide model, leather, sole and other details. Together with the shoemaker you go through things to get it just right for you.
I’ve written before about the fact that we’ve see seen better polished shoes coming straight out of the factory to a larger degree in recent years. This has continued to be pushed, and nowadays you can get a properly mirror polished pair when you open the shoe box, as with these oxfords from the Chinese brand Twinkima G.
One of the absolute most popular type of men’s shoes at the moment are various kinds of soft loafers. Most brands offer some version of this nowadays, cemented ones are probably most common, but you’ll also find versions with constructions like Blake, Bologna, moccasin construction or more special ones as these here from Bridlen, which are reverse Goodyear.
Bespoke shoes for women are a bit of it’s own category. There’s some specialised makers who focus on women’s bespoke shoes, even if many who promote themselves as such make more of MTO shoes, and then many who mainly do men’s shoes also makes shoes for women. One such example is Catella Shoemaker, who’ve made the fitting shoes on the photo here.
With relatively simple things one can create something completely unique, even if the base is still highly traditional both in terms of design and construction. This shoe here by Stefano Bemer is a great example of this.
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Every now and then you stumble over shoe models which you just don’t understand why they aren’t more common. This vintage balmoral split toe derby is one such model, made some 50 years ago by the American company Hanover, part of their premium LB Sheppard Signature range.
A few years ago John Lobb Paris collaborated with a gold leaf specialist and created a bespoke sample which had the whole bottom covered in 24 karat gold leaf. I’ve shown them before, but they are certainly worth displaying again, both due to the lovely look and the skilled craftsmanship.
In a factory basically all brogueing is done with machines, done in a similar fashion as sewing machine basically. Most bespoke shoemakers do this by hand instead, punch every hole (or pair of holes in the case of the small ones) one by one. Here it’s done in the workshop of Catella.
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.
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.
