A handsome shoe or a comfortable one? Bernhard Roetzel clears up the legends about bespoke shoes, from the idea of perfect comfort to whether form and function rule each other out.
Bespoke shoes for beginners: Bernhard Roetzel on motivation, hand work and fit, with five tips for a first order with a bespoke shoemaker.
Twenty-two-year-old Timberland boat shoes restitched at the Poeschk workshop in Berlin. What a proper shoe repair costs and what it gives back.
During Pitti Uomo in January 2024 Bernhard Roetzel watches Pascal Zimmer of Luxembourg, of the outfitter Basics and Bespoke, try on his bespoke shoes by Vivian Saskia Wittmer. On the fitting as a small ceremony between maker and customer.
At Ludwig Reiter the made-to-order option is called Privatanfertigung: a ready-to-wear shoe built individually with the customer's choice of leather and sole. Bernhard Roetzel places his order at the factory outlet in Gut Süßenbrunn.
Ludwig Reiter I opened his Vienna shoemaker's workshop in 1885, and his great-grandson Til Reiter took over in 1985. Part 1 of the visit to Vienna's last welted shoe manufactory and its 140-year history.
Berlin-based bespoke shoemaker Korbinian Ludwig Heß has launched a wooden shoe-care box stocked with Saphir products. In conversation he explains why sparing application matters and how cream and wax paste complement each other.
László Budapest, part of Schwangau Schuh GmbH in Ostallgäu, has its welted shoes built in a Hungarian workshop under its own direction. Bernhard Roetzel reviews the bestseller, the Norwegian Magnus in brown cowhide.
Bernhard Roetzel reviews a loafer from Simon Wegmann's online bespoke concept Wayman Bespoke: the trial shoe sent by post, the remote measurement process and the fit of the finished pair, ordered without a single physical fitting.
Sandals are seen as the antithesis of classic style, yet Tricker's offered them and Materna in Vienna makes bespoke sandals. Bernhard Roetzel on how sandals can sit alongside formalwear without contradicting it.
