December 30, 2019
My good friend Hugo Jacomet of Parisian Gentleman and Sartorial Talks was kind enough to send me one of his new books, Souliers, an ode to some of the finest shoemakers around. It’s a beautiful book that I highly recommend to any shoe enthusiast and especially if you own a menswear store. It’s a great table piece that all will enjoy reading, if not simply seeing the beautiful photography and great shoes shown! Sartorial […]
December 23, 2019
Kirby Allison of the Hanger Project has recently made a very interesting educational documentary on the famous John Lobb St. James of London, one of the world’s most renowned Bespoke shoemakers. I can tell you that this is something that few people get access to they are notorious for being quite private with regards to their company and what goes on behind closed doors. But Kirby managed to get access to all of it! […]
August 15, 2019
Bespoke shoemaker, TYE Shoemaker, out of Japan has been making some very very interesting shoes since coming to light a few years back, thanks to Instagram. The latest are these very intriguing and unique blue suede Crocodile Norwegian welt derbies with a commando gum sole and a bamboo pattern. Damn, that’s a lot going on. Not to mention the braided trimming, just a little touch of detail that TYE likes to commonly through in there. […]
August 8, 2019
Following yesterday’s roast of Berluti’s RTW atrocities, is the upside post about their Bespoke Program and the amazingness that comes out of that. I recently saw this photo on the Instagram account of @sole_preacher and was immediately impressed with all that was going on. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not a ‘normal’ shoe. This, for me, is not necessarily a wearable shoe either (i.e. I would not wear it) but the detail, making, […]
July 31, 2019
It’s nice to see when inspiration has been used to create something of passion. This style of loafer I have only ever seen once in my life and it was originally created by Magnanni and I wrote about it HERE. It would appear that Vietnamese Shoemaker Thanh Le saw this too and decided to make him and his lady a pair, which I find quite romantic! And I like what he did with it, fading […]
July 17, 2019
***Pics of shoes have nothing to do with the post, just for your eye candy*** There is a lot of confusion in the consumer’s eyes on what you should expect from a pair of shoes and I was hoping to clear that up for some of you as it is important to know what you will get from what you will pay for in a pair of shoes. So let’s break it down. I have […]
July 16, 2019
A pretty cool project recently went underway between a bespoke shoemaker and a wooden inlayer in the heart of Florence, Italy. For a presentation at the latest Pitti Uomo, they created three samples of shoes, one being a normal, leather brogue, another being made the same but in special cuts of wood (the middle, brown one) and one is in white paper (looks like paper mache). The shoemaker is called Orma Shoemaker (Wataru Shimamoto), trained […]
July 1, 2019
Parisian shoemaker, Aubercy, makes a very awesome shade of green leather. One that they in fact, use a ton and that I love to see. It’s a very deep, dark Emerald like green that is more vivid than most green shades out there. You don’t often find so many box calf skins in green (pre-dyed in the tannery) so what you tend to find is it being dyed after the fact on a crust leather. […]
June 5, 2019
For those of you that haven’t heard of him, there is a new bespoke shoemaker in town (of course, when I say new, I don’t mean literally) that is of French origin but set up with operations in Dubai. And his name is Morgan Papin. I don’t recall how I came across him. For sure on Instagram. But what got me was the shoe above. We all know that I am a huge sucker for […]
May 14, 2019
This is part two of the massive walkthrough of all competition shoes in the World Championships in Shoemaking 2019. Here position 11 to 40 is reviewed with comments and pictures.
