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Recently a user on the Goodyear welt forum on Reddit finished a really ambitious test where he had leather strips from four different leather types hang outside for two years, where all types of leathers received none or a varied amount of different types of conditioners. The result is quite interesting.
In a new short film the crème de la crème of French bespoke shoemaking talk about their industry and what makes it special. It’s made by the French national association of shoemakers, likely with the aim to attract new young persons to the trade. A highly inspirational video definitely worth a view.
Buying shoes online from a maker one haven’t tried before is a challenge, and internet is full of size guides and questions and answers on sizing. Grayle is a new website that wants to be the one stop solution for all shoe sizing questions, by building the world’s largest database on shoe fit.
Boston Magazine has published a long article covering the amazing, horrifying and sad story of how the Alden Shoe Company executive Richard Hajjar embezzled millions of dollars during a number of years from his employer, all to finance an extremely luxurious jet set lifestyle and a celebrity career for his local TV star “girlfriend”.
Japanese MTO and bespoke makers Siroeno Yosui has made lovely film thoroughly showcasing all steps of making a pair of fully handmade shoes. With high quality footage and a great production, this can be one of the better films available for those who want to understand all the steps that goes into making handmade shoes.
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Lovable Brogue is a new blog about classic men’s shoes, which has offered a lot of readable content during its four months of existence, and hopefully will a continuing to do so for a long time going forward. The more good content on quality shoes, the merrier.
There’s a few men around the world that has more impressive shoe collections than others. Luckily a few of them take the time to share their collections online, one of these is the Japanese behind the website Centipede, where photos of his around 250 pairs of shoes are gathered, everything from entry level Goodyear welted shoes to bespoke shoes from lots of different makers.
If you’re interested in learning more about leathers – the various kinds, various properties and much more – there’s few better places than The Leather Dictionary. A sort of Wikipedia for all things leather, an excellent source for knowledge.
Here’s another documentary about another of the world champions in shoe shining, 2018 champion John Chung from Singapore. It’s made by the Malaysian/Singaporean channel Astro AEC and is a nice portrait of the successful shoe shiner.
The first world champion in shoe shining, Yuya Hasegawa, has become a bit of a celebrity in his home country Japan. Latest proof of that is a 50 minute long documentary aired on the Japanese public service broadcasting company NHK, now available to view with English voice over for two weeks time, including a brief interview with myself.
