Shoegazing Podcast

For this episode I met John Chung, who runs the shoe shine bar, shoe and leather goods repair shop and shoe store Mason & Smith in Singapore. He won the world championships of shoe shining in 2018, and has for many years been an ambassadeur for professional shoe shining in particular and caring for your shoes in general. Mason & Smith has not least been pioneers with shoe shine videos on Instagram...

This around it's time for another Q&A Special, and the one who gets to answer all the questions is the American / Japanese shoemaker Seiji McCarthy. He's based in Tokyo since many years where he runs his very successful shoe brand that primarily makes classic American styled bespoke, MTM and MTO shoes. You can hear more about his journey in episode 25 of the podcast. Some of the questions he'll an...

For this one, I met up with Daniel Bucheli of the Swiss shoe company Majordome. It was founded in 2012 in Zurich, they now have stores in the hometown as well as Lausanne, Bern and New York. Majordome started off doing only Goodyear welted Made to Order and Made to Measure shoes, and still today custom orders account for about half their sales. Even if the brand has a foundation of more classic st...

For this episode, I met up with the Australian born, UK-based, shoemaker Sebastian Tarek. Apart from running his own bespoke shoe brand and doing outwork for various London-based bespoke shoemakers, he has also for many years been involved in teaching shoemaking both at colleges and in other ways, and is highly engaged in the topic of education. With focus on the UK but also looking at it at a wid...

In this episode we are putting the spotlight on an integral part of the shoe industry, that aren't that known to the wider audience since it doesn't deal with the regular consumer: the leather wholesalers. One of the leading such for the shoe industry in the UK is Euroleathers, where Rob James is a Director. Earlier this spring I visited him and the family business in Northamptonshire, had a tour...

With this episode we are back in Japan again, back in Tokyo, where I met Takashi Horiguchi, or "Gucci" as he mostly is called, who run the acclaimed vintage classic men's shoe store Super 8 Shoes. A store that focus on American and British shoes from the 1950's to 1980's, known for the overall very good condition of the selection they offer, and quite a large amount of New Old Stock, old shoes tha...

It's time for another edition of the appreciated Question and answers specials, with Daniel Wegan of Catella Shoemaker. Daniel made a name of himself when he for several years ran the bespoke department at the English company Gaziano & Girling, now since some years he has his own bespoke shoe brand Catella. He also won the shoemaking world championships in 2019. In this episode some of the topics...

For this episode I met up with Jim McCormack, a legendary bespoke shoemaker in England, who has spent over five decades in the trade. For more or less all of these years, he has worked as an outworker, doing bottom making for many different firms. England is the country in the world where the outworker system is the most extended. We talk a lot about the freelance system, how it works, the pros an...

For episode 30 I sat down with Ben Robinson of Stitchdown. As you likely know, Shoegazing's focus on the site, podcast, events etc is on classic dress shoes, well Stitchdown is sort of the equivalent within the world of workwear boots, or heritage boots, or whatever you want to call it. In short, Ben knows a whole lot about boots and rugged footwear. So, apart from learning how Ben ended up in the...

For this episode, number 29, I visited the well-renowned shoe store Leffot in New York and talked to the founder and owner Steven Taffel. When the world entered the digital era, Leffot was one of the first influential multi-brand stores specialising in classic, mainly welted, men's shoes, and it has had a big impact both on its customer base and on other stores around the world that have been insp...

In this episode, aim is to connect historic shoemaking with the present, and we do this together with William Efe Laborde. An independent bespoke shoemaker based in London, who has a huge interest in old shoes, tools and leathers which he both brings in to his own shoemaking, and as a side business he also refurbish and sell old vintage tools. Given that classic shoes in general use old traditiona...

This is the second Q&A Special with Daniel Wegan, the first one was really popular, so we thought we'd do another round. For those who don't know, Daniel Wegan is a Swede who since many years live in the UK in Kettering, Northampton. He used to work for the bespoke department of Gaziano & Girling, but a few years ago he left to start his own brand Catella. Worth mentioning as well is that he won t...

In this episode we will go all in on the nitty gritty of shoe care. We do this together with Anders Sundström, who has developed the new premium shoe care range Paul Brunngård, for the Swedish company with the same name. Paul Brunngård is the largest shoe care company in Scandinavia, but previously focus has been on more basic shoe care products and eco-friendly stuff. Now they wanted to develop t...

In this episode you'll get to meet Seiji McCarthy, a shoemaker with an American father and a Japanese mother, who grew up in Philadelphia on the US East coast but now since seven years lives in Tokyo, Japan. Here he is merging the Japanese highly skilled craftsmanship with traditional American style footwear. This was not always the case though, up until a few years ago he did more dressy, British...

It's time for the second special edition Q&A episode, where you listeners and readers of Shoegazing.com gets to ask questions to some big names from the quality shoe industry. This round it's the most famous of all Japanese bespoke shoemakers that is answering your questions, Yohei Fukuda. Since about 14 years his bespoke shoes and nowadays also top class RTW and MTO offerings has been a holy grai...

Affan Mohammed is the Managing Director of Bridlen Shoes, an Indian maker of Goodyear welted footwear that is getting more and more attention both domestically and internationally. Founded by Affan's father Hasan who had worked his whole life with leather craft and shoemaking, and Mr. Watanabe from Japan, who among other things was involved in the start of Meermin. To make high quality Goodyear we...

This episode, number 22, will be featuring no other than Jean-Michel Casalonga. He is the main lastmaker and workshop manager of Berluti's Paris workshop. The French company Berluti is one of the bigger quality shoe brands in the world, nowadays more of a full fashion menswear brand , owned by the luxury conglomerate LVMH, with stores all around the world. Berluti has two workshops making their be...

In this episode we put the spotlight on the thriving boot and shoemaking scene in Indonesia, we do this together with Emil Rahmana Putra. He is the founder of the two brands Winson and Midas Bootmaker, where the first now is making the finest fully handmade dress shoes in the country, a true premium product of absolute top quality, while Midas focus on more affordable still excellent handmade Read...

In this episode you'll get to meet the very charismatic bespoke shoemaker Patrick Frei from Germany. He made a name of himself more widely when he won the World Championships in Shoemaking in 2018, and is seen by many as one of the greatest shoemakers around today. He works out of his workshop in Freiburg in Southwest of Germany, together with his shoemaking partner Kazuya Kimura. For those of you...

For this episode I once again was able to sit down with the interviewee in person. A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Germany and France, and one of the stops was Tanneries Haas, one of the leading calf leather tanneries in Europe. Here I met Jacques Kress, Export manager and responsible for all the Tanneries Haas' clients from the shoe industry, who has a background as European agent for Allen...

In this episode we are meeting a proper shoe collector - André Simha, from Geneva, Switzerland. Known to many as andrel42 on Instagram, where he shows off his seriously impressive shoe collection, with around 300 pairs of welted shoes from literally all over the world. For over four decades he's had a big interest in classic shoes, and owns everything from the most famous brands down to very obscu...

This time we're going to go in-depth on the experience of ordering bespoke shoes, this from a bespoke shoemakers viewpoint. Nicholas Templeman is an independent bespoke maker based in London, England, who left his job at the legendary workshop of John Lobb to set up his own brand. He has a reputation of being very service-minded, going that extra length to make both the process and the final produ...

In this episode I talk with Rezső Kuti of the Hungarian brand Vass Shoes, certainly the most famous shoe brand of the country, who've been making hand welted fully handmade shoes since the 1970's. Rezső worked as Sales Manager for the company for about a decade and built up its internationally successful MTO programme, he then spent a couple of years as Factory Manager for Heinrich Dinkelacker's B...

In this episode we meet Leon Fan, who together with Kevin Li founded the famous shoe store Medallion Shoes, now with two huge brick and mortar stores in Beijing and Shanghai in China. They have sort of become the Chinese equivalent to the Isetan Men's shoe department in Tokyo, Japan, in the way it's not only setting a big mark on the huge domestic market, but also internationally. This also goes f...

The Shoegazing Podcast is back, this time with a new type of special edition episodes that will pop-up every now and then, called Q&A Specials. Basically you listeners and readers of Shoegazing.com get to ask questions to some famous names from the classic shoe industry. This round is with Daniel Wegan, the Swede who made a name of himself working at the bespoke department of Gaziano & Girling in...