If not a bespoke shoe, then Allen Edmonds

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My bespoke suit will be arriving before my custom shoes will. As such, I need a good pair of shoes to wear with the suit in the interim. Not only that, it’s better to rotate your pairs of shoes when possible: this allows for them to rest, prolonging the lifespan of your shoes.

However, as much as you might want to preserve your beau­tiful leather shoes, wear and tear will inevitably happen (unless you’re filthy rich and have a billion pairs of shoes). You can always take your shoe to a cobbler, but I have always felt that you are taking your chances on them: you can never tell what your shoes will be like when they come out of that shop. I’ve had my share of terrible cobblers, including one who resoled my shoe so poorly that there was a nail poking through to the inside. I’m lucky that I have terribly thick skin, otherwise the nail would’ve punc­tured my foot and I would’ve been bleeding through my socks.

That is why you buy Allen Edmonds (or just find a better cobbler). This shoe company (appar­ently a high end one to boot) has a recrafting service. If your shoes are looking worse for wear, you can send them in to be rebuilt, hope­fully looking nice and like-new. Their 38 step process is incredibly detailed and thorough. Consid­ering that it only costs $95 to rework the entire shoe, purchasing a pair of shoes from Allen Edmond seems to be a very good investment. I don’t know how good the leather uppers will look after they rebuild the shoe: they don’t mention much of anything about the servicing that part of the shoe. But either way, I like the idea that should I need to service my shoe, the company that I bought them from is willing to back it. That reas­surance is the reason I personally just sprung for a pair of Allen Edmonds myself.

Of course, the loveliest designs won’t save your feet if you don’t get properly measured. I know that most people only have a rough esti­mation of their shoe size. The fact is that they can differ from one shoe company to the next. But even so, a lot of people tend to know only that they’re “between a size 9 and 10″. I would wager though that most of us never truly measured our feet properly. And that was some­thing I decided to do. Though it is by no means detailed in the way a bespoke shoe­maker would measure, it’ll be plenty useful to know your precise foot measure­ments instead of trying on various shoe sizes and widths at the department store. The links at the bottom are what helped me choose the best shoe size for my foot.

Back to the video (which I think looks like it could be an employee training video). I’m a huge fan of trans­parency. Honestly, when I pay a good deal of money for anything, I want to know why. I want to know what type of work goes into the product that I’m using. I want to know the origins of the parts and where it was constructed. This knowledge isn’t just to make me feel better about spending that sort of money, but also to under­stand as much as I can about what I am using. So when I see all 38 steps of the recrafting process, I can appre­ciate my shoes more.

I suppose it’s a matter of appre­ci­ation then. In the same way that one might see things in a new light after they take an art or film appre­ci­ation class, seeing this little video about rebuilding the shoe gave me some new insight into the work and care that goes into a shoe. Which is only fair, consid­ering that you put the things on your feet every day.

Points of Interest

• Find Your Shoe Size — missing widths greater than E
• Shoe Size Calcu­lator — good for seeing what width you require
• Printable Men’s Foot Size Chart