In this podcast series Jesper Ingevaldsson of Shoegazing, one of the world's largest websites on classic men's shoes, does in-depth interviews with various shoe people from all over the world, where each episode will focus on a specific topic related to the interviewee. For much more on classic quality shoes, visit Shoegazing.com.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…