Bespoke shoes for beginners: Bernhard Roetzel on motivation, hand work and fit, with five tips for a first order with a bespoke shoemaker.
Bernhard Roetzel orders a double-stitched one-piece in the Haferl style from Munich specialist Schuh Bertl. The distinctive feature: the leather insole actively supports the foot, with no removable orthopaedic insert.
Frankfurt-based Simon Wegmann founded Wayman Bespoke to deliver bespoke shoes by post, without a single physical fitting. In our interview he explains how he takes the measurements, builds the trial shoe and ships it worldwide.
Bernhard Roetzel collects a new pair from Viennese bespoke shoemaker Lucian Maftei at the Campe & Ohff shirt shop in Hamburg. The fourth pair, built on a new Budapest-shaped last with stormwelt construction.
The third and final part of the Maftei bespoke-shoe report: Bernhard Roetzel collects his Derbies from Lucian Maftei in Vienna and weighs the speed of delivery, the chemistry with the maker, and the finished result.
Wegen Corona verschoben, nun in Hamburg: Bernhard Roetzel probiert den Probierschuh von Maftei. Was bedeutet es, dass ein Schuh „passt“, und warum ist die Anprobe für Schuhmacher noch schwieriger als für Schneider?
James Fox, head of marketing at the family-owned Crockett & Jones in Northampton, on running a shoe factory through the pandemic and on the steady demand for classics that has carried the firm through earlier storms too.
How is a bespoke shoemaker faring during the pandemic? Bernhard Roetzel meets Korbinian Ludwig Heß in his Berlin workshop and sees three new pairs of shoes, including a cordovan commission.
Bernhard Roetzel orders his first pair of bespoke shoes from Maftei in Vienna, meeting Lucian Maftei at Ladage & Oelke in Hamburg. The Maftei family came from Romania in the 1980s, the workshop is still there, the trunk shows have toured Germany for over twenty years.
Mircea Cioponea, the man behind the shoe blog Claymoorslist, has joined forces with shoemaker Petru Coca to open a bespoke atelier in Bucharest. An interview about Romania's Austro-Hungarian shoemaking heritage and the road to their own workshop.
Vivian Saskia Wittmer is the only female bespoke shoemaker in Florence, originally from Germany and at her workbench in Italy for over twenty years. A portrait of a craftswoman who skips the mystique and simply aims to make very good shoes.
