I was looking around and found these two shoemakers for Taiwan, they make beautiful goodyear welted dress shoes like oxfords. Looks really nice, and it seems to be of high quality in terms of last, leather, stitching, and welting. Will have to check them out.
First is Graziat, their website is still under construction but here is their Instagram and the shoes snob blog wrote about them.
I was thinking about this yesterday. I was wondering if there were any bespoke shoemakers here.
But from the two links, I would not pay those prices for non bespoke shoes.
I have had a 4 pairs made in Hong Kong where they have my shoe last. Price was around 8000NT. I could order at any time and don’t ever need to return to HK.
Not for me, but I found these ones yesterday:
They don’t show many if at all any photos with a good look at the sole:
You got bespoke shoes for 8000NTD? wow, that is an amazing deal. Would be 40K for a decent pair min in anywhere else.
I was finally going to pull the trigger on some Carmina shoes, about 500USD a pair. I’ve seen it and they are really high quality as ready to wear goes without going into English shoemakers like John Lobb or Edward Green.
Some of the finishing is not great, on brown shoes, but you cold redo them yourself and some have. You can show them any design and they can copy that design.
All mine bar the boots I got made have a blake stitched sole. The boots have a Goodyear welt with a Dainite sole - which is more expensive.
They look alright, the leather doesn’t look the best nor does the finer details of shoemaking. But for 8k for a bespoke shoe that will fit your feet perfectly, it’s a pretty good deal.
I was thinking of getting it as a treat for my birthday this coming month. I won’t be able to try, but the shop lets me send it back if they don’t fit great. But seeing it on your feet vs the pictures also matters.
As I get older, there are fewer things I want. I get tired of all the low quality cheap items clearly meant to to be thrown away quickly and not made to last. Especially as someone who moves a lot, you began to realize how crappy most things are as you have to prioritize what to bring with you with limited space. So I would like a nice pair of dress shoes to last and wear on the occasion. I tried going cheaper but run into issues where it’s just more costly if you think about how long they last, look, age, ect. I try not to buy things unless I will really love it and it will be used often and last a long time.
I don’t know much about shoes, but Oringo (map) do bespoke stuff. I haven’t tried it, but I have some of their off-the-shelf shoes and really like them. Simple, well-made, and very reasonably priced.
The Graziat shoes remind me of Berluti, which are too showy for my taste.
I actually tried to get Oringo to make me something bespoke. There was a lot of resistance. I fell back to asking for a minor change to a shelf model. The store staff had to check with the ‘master’ (over weeks), who eventually said no. Having said that, they do stock larger shoe sizes in their shelf collection than you normally find in Taiwan.
Not from Taiwan. But shoes I got for my birthday finally came. One of the random hobbies I’ve picked up on lockdown is shoe making. It’s actually pretty interesting, in my opinion. These ones are from Vass Budapest. Really nice and handwelted. Handwelted shoes usually start close to $1000 but these were about $450 on sale. Still expensive but they are a bargain for the quality. The cost of labor is cheaper than in Italy, France, and England, so they can offer it at half the price.
