It was only recently that I learnt that skiving off came from this as it’s the only job in shoe/boot making where you sit down
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Nice one. I did wonder.
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Fucking up a shoe to discover it’s not all that (Fiber board heel alert)
$650 to resole brand new shoes. Nice.
Yes and no. I think as with tailoring, the trade is divided into different disciplines. The guy in the vid seems to be doing pretty much everything, although you don’t see him making the last.
There are one of two very good shoemakers around but I think mostly they are last makers who use different outworkers to put the items together.
Sadly, I don’t think the bigger names on Jermyn Street are the go-to for the highest standards any longer. There are very good one-man-bands though.
There are amazing Japanese shoe makers and great tailors too. I’d say better than here. However, I wouldn’t necessarily go to a Japanese tailor for a British style suit, they mostly look to Italy for inspiration. I expect it is the same for shoes but I have seen truly spectacular Japanese shoes on instagram 
I could bang on forever about the demise of craft here-there are multiple reasons why it’s all going south. One of the biggest though is that you have to start young. Here, we are fixated on higher education and our kids ‘achieving’ so learning a craft from scratch, on low wages for years isn’t an attractive proposition for mum and dad, or indoctrinated offspring. Those that aren’t airline pilot/doctor etc material are sent to college first and end up entering trades at 23-24, entitled because they have a stifcut that says they are a tailor, or whatever. Because this has been going on for a while, when they do get ‘in’ they are working with others who started late…
The best in my trade have gone or are dying off now and haven’t passed on their skills. Most of them started really young, especially those from Italy or Cyprus - 9-10 years old! I started at 15/16 and they looked down their noses at that! The guy in that video is young, he’ll be better still in 30 or 40 years…
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Cheers Ritchie.
The second half really resonates - it’s gutting to know these incredible manual skills are being lost because of this batshit delusion that a university degree is the only way forward.
It’s one reason you can’t find decent tradesmen - even though nowadays they earn seriously good money and can pick-and-choose jobs.
I’ve also tried to help pick-up the pieces for kids who went through the mill and then couldn’t cope with the awful reality that they’d basically stayed in school (in some cases) until they were pushing 30. They just couldn’t cope with the realities of the adult world, the workplace, and most of-all discovering that all that expensive education was next to useless, that they may never have secure employment, and that they might be a decade away from being able to own a home (another Popular Modern Delusion) or start a fambly…
It gives me the Big Sad…
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Too true, when I was working on the £30 million refurb at Stow-on-the-Wold working for a Oxford company called Symm, established 1800 and something, they had some outstanding tradesmen, blokes of my age who had a lifetime of experience on top class work. There were 2 decorators who had worked all over the world for lots of celebrities including for the Sultan of Dubai who did graining and marbling and all the traditional skills. They were doing the Garden Room at Stow, the hand painted wallpaper cost £35K for a room 20’ X 20". I asked why they weren’t training anyone they said the company weren’t interested in giving them an apprentice. The same with an old carpenter who was repairing the oak panelling in the study, it was like invisible mending, but not training anyone who could maybe one day be as good. The standard of the majority of trades people is now abysmal with zero pride in their work, I really don’t know what’s going to happen in the future
FFS The Sultan of Brunei 
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Attitudes might be changing, a few of the FoLs mates have decided against uni in favour of apprenticeships, despite great a levels or BTecs. One girl has got an engineering apprenticeship at BAE, is working on F35s and hoping that the Tempest becomes a reality because “It will kill the fuck out of the yank shit…” So she’s passed the Workshop Communications module in her first year.
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Heartening stuff Rob 
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It appears the internet calls bluff on that one.
These however do exist for 639 of your pounds.
https://www.nordstrom.com/s/balenciaga-faux-shearling-slide-sandal-women/6701657?origin=coordinating-6701657-0-2-MOBI_PDP_1-recbot-also_viewed_graph&recs_placement=MOBI_PDP_1&recs_strategy=also_viewed_graph&recs_source=recbot&recs_page_type=product&recs_seed=6557214&color=DARK%20FUCHSIA%2F%20PARIS
Faux fur so you know that no fraggles were harmed in their manufacture.
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I’ve been following Yohei Fukuda for a while. His stuff looks beautiful. He seems to have a lot of international clients too.
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A love Adidas trainers as much as the next man (except @Tons_of_fun obvs) but that’s just plain wrong.
Bloody shoe fetishists 
Age of consent comes to mind
In other colours as well
Quite unacceptable
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