Christophe Corthay is a legendary bespoke shoemaker from France. He has spent more than three decades making shoes, previously with his brother Pierre at Maison Corthay, but nowadays he runs Atelier du Tranchet together with Sebastian "Toulouz" Algans and Phillippe de Paillette. Those who’ve seen their shoes know that most of them are truly artistic creations, that looks like nothing you see from other brands. So I decided to talk to Christophe Corthay about the sometimes slightly controversial topic: shoes and art.

In this episode of the Shoegazing Podcast I met Maslow So from Hong Kong, the man behind the brand Mori of Shoemakers, who in a very interesting way try to combine elements from bespoke shoes with factory-made RTW shoes. Mori has various bespoke shoemakers from around the world designing lasts and models, and then a factory in China producing hand welted lovely looking shoes offered at a very competitive price. We sat down and talked about this project, and about merging bespoke and factory-made.

Meet the famous shoemaker Hiro Yanagimachi, one of the pioneers of the new wave of Japanese bespoke shoemaking. When he started his business two decades ago there were only a few Japanese making bespoke shoes, today there’s more than 50 bespoke shoemakers in the country, now one of the leading scenes in the world. How this came to be is what we focused our discussion around.

What's the main challenges when setting up a new shoe brand, how is it to be a small player working together with a big factory, and how do you succeed in today's highly competitive market? These are some of the questions that Tom Brone, the man behind the brand Sons of Henrey, answers in this episode.

Hear bespoke shoemaker Daniel Wegan talk about dedication, which took him to the bespoke department of Gaziano & Girling, made him the head of the same department, and this year he won the World Championships in Shoemaking. He also gives a bunch of advice to aspiring shoemakers.

In this episode, I met the famous Japanese bespoke shoemaker Yohei Fukuda, who besides making some of the finest shoes in the world, also have been very successful with creating a brand image, something quite difficult especially for small bespoke shoemakers. It’s around this topic we focused our discussion.

For the first edition of the Shoegazing Podcast, I sat down with Patrik Löf, founder and owner of the famous Swedish shoe shop Skoaktiebolaget, to talk about the journey they have been on and about the past, current and future situation for multi-brand men’s shoe stores.