July 13, 2017
Perfect leather all the way around….top grade too Let me start by saying that this is a long, yet informative post. I made a comment on the blog the other day in reference to one shoemakeris leather being typically of a lesser quality with respects to another maker. Not necessarily that it was a low quality, only that within the grades of high quality, one was lower than the other. This comment threw off the […]
July 1, 2017
Let me first off start by saying one thing: a cobbler is not a shoemaker. This is one thing that bothers me and has just seem to have stuck in people’s heads since the dawn of time. Cobblers, at one point in time, did double as shoemakers and shoe menders, but in this day and age, they are simply people who fix other people’s shoes. Now don’t get me wrong cobblers can also be artisans, […]
June 28, 2017
Bespoke shoes by Gaziano & Girling As I have stated before, there seems to be a whole lot of confusion as to how a shoe is made (whether by hand, machine or a bit of both), particularly due to the lack of knowledge from salesmen at retail stores, as well as the misrepresentation of words (such as ‘handmade’) printed on a shoe itself and/or the marketing of most brands. These two things, coupled with the […]
May 30, 2017
Being an aspiring shoemaker/shoe designer myself, I find it critical to try and meet the people in the industry who are shoemakers or shoe designers themselves and do my best to absorb their knowledge or input of how exactly one gets into the industry and more importantly, how one successfully stays in the industry. Knowing that I am not the only aspiring individual and that it might not always be easy to get this type […]
May 27, 2017
There is a lot of opinion/speculation on shoe trees and their importance in relation to footwear. Some well known so-called ‘facts’ in reference to shoe trees may seem like truth, but could be very well be the outcome of genius marketing and branding. In this post, I will try my best to give logical reasoning to shoe trees and an objective explanation for what you really need, when it comes to their use and your […]
May 23, 2017
JM Weston Triple Sole Brogue – Hard to Break In!!! When you think about buying shoes, most people probably think about getting the most comfortable thing that they can find, as when we are not sleeping, we are most likely on our feet. Now assuming that our feet were made for walking on earth (dirt, soil etc.), one would think that wearing stiff leather in comparison might not be the most sound idea, which is […]
May 1, 2017
A blog reader, in light of the shoe polishing contest, sent it a few pictures of some of his old Loake’s (he reckons 12-20 yrs old), that he had taken from rubbish bin status to relatively new looking in just a matter of a few hours with some of the methods that he learned on the ‘A Guide To Dyeing Your Shoes‘ post. While you can use most of those methods to really do the […]
April 13, 2017
While living in America and working at Nordstrom (way back when), I remember many of the Italian brands making shoes in what looked like a cross between calfskin and patent. Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana loved the stuff! And to be honest, as I was young and a bit naive, I remember being quite attracted to these shiny things. They had all of the glitz & the glam and thus looked the part of […]
December 13, 2016
I am a firm believer in the thought that technology, albeit amazing, has made society as a whole, a lot lazier. We don’t have to work nearly as hard (or at all in the case of some production) to create the same things that our forefathers did. And in many industries, this change in quality of production is very obvious. Let’s take the shoe industry for example. In my opinion, the quality of production has […]
November 14, 2016
Just in case you can’t tell, that is green pebble grain on the left….beautiful! The other day I was frequenting my favorite street, Jermyn St. (as I often do), seeing what the haps was on the latest and greatest. I walked by John Lobb’s shop and was blown away by what I was seeing in their window display. Not only was there red suede double monks, but even more unique and impressive was the deep […]
