Matt Priest, President and CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, came on the Shoecast the morning after 104% tariffs on Chinese goods into the US hit in a rapidly-moving-target trade war with the United States and just about every other country. 

What ARE tariffs? How might tariffs and general uncertainty impact massive shoe brands? Smaller ones? Made-in-USA footwear? Retail prices? What's kinds of supply chain breakdowns have already happened and what might be next? How does the lobbying work that FDRA does function and benefit the footwear industry? And why is everyone suddenly really, really mad at Matt? 

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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Derek’s an OG forum junkie turned menswear writer for Put This On, mass publications like The New York Times, and his own always-excellent blog Die Workwear!.

In the last few years, Derek has become, to many, Menswear Guy on Twitter, where his sharp cultural insights on style and complete lack of brevity break every rule of the platform in such a wonderfully potent manner (…and sometimes get him screamed at online, believe it or not).

I’ve been a huge fan of Derek’s for years, so getting some time with him to just talk about the shoes and boots we dig, from bespoke to workboots, was—putting it quite lightly—an honor.

Links to every brand/style we discuss can be found here: https://www.stitchdown.com/stitchdown-shoecast/derek-guy-recommends-shoes-boots/

Put This On https://putthison.com/author/derek/

Die Workwear https://dieworkwear.com/

Derek's Twitter: https://x.com/dieworkwear

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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In 2019, Justin James started Opie Way, a recraftable sneaker brand made right in Asheville North Carolina, USA, using incredibly high quality materials—something that basically didn’t exist previously.

Then suddenly, Justin's factory and brand didn't exist. In 2024, Hurricane Helene brought six feet of rampaging water tore through the Opie Way factory. Machinery, records, inventory, supplies—destroyed in a literal flash.

What’s it like to lose everything? How do you build back in the face of cataclysmic challenges? When true disaster strikes is there, somehow, a positive, just waiting to be uncovered?

Check out Opie Way's site: https://opieway.com/

And here's the Pearl Boot Company website, Justin's newest footwear venture we discuss quite a bit: https://pearlboot.com/

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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Jamie Thomas is one of the most revered skateboarders of all time—and also a footwear designer and serial skate shoe brand founder. The release of his latest brand Warsaw seemed as good an excuse as any to have Jamie take me through the history of skate shoes and the sponsorships that arose around them, how and where they're made (and with what materials, constructions, and performance considerations), and how the landscape of one of the world's most influential types of footwear has shifted over the decades. 

Here’s my chat with Jamie Thomas, on the Shoecast. 

Jamie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamiethomas/
Warsaw: https://warsawltd.com/
Jamie Thomas' 1997 Leap of Faith jump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqqPCqyAfl4

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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The idea that well-made, resoable footwear can last almost literally forever is one of its core allures—but it’s a promise that simply won’t come true if it’s not cared for properly. Especially the leather. 

But what’s the best way to do that? And for different types of leather? Well you’ll know a ton more after my fantastic chat with Andy Vaughn, owner of Pure Polish, the Oregon-based company whose emphasis on 100% natural, non-toxic leather care products is fulfilled thanks to the kind of experience and knowledge that comes with obviously researching and making the stuff—but also personally restoring over 100 pairs of vintage shoes—all of which we got out of Andy over the course of a fantastic episode. 

Get ready for the most fun you’ll ever have learning about Bentonite clay, along with where things can go VERY wrong, Andy’s Universal Care Truth Trinity, why brushing is so essential and if the fancy ones are worth it, and plenty more. 

Time to keep it clean, keep it conditioned, and keep it protected, with Andy Vaughn, of Pure Polish. 

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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It's our first-ever BONUS Shoecast episode—in a brand new format called Shop Talk. 

The idea is simple: 

-1 moderator (Ben from Stitchdown)

-2 guests—this time, Brett Viberg of Viberg Boot, and Shuyler Mowe of Nicks Boots.

-3 questions apiece—which can be about absolutely anything, and the other guest MUST answer meaningfully. 

And boy did it end up being hugely revealing, and insightful, and just damned interesting. And fun! 

This first bonus Shoecast episode is free to listen to for everyone! 

But after that, all bonus Shoecast episodes will be available for our wonderful Stitchdown Premium subscribers only. If you want to look more into how to support the show with a membership, and get access to even more Shoecast, stop by Stitchdown.com and check out the Shoecast tab for more info.

Hope to see you in the Discord! And right here for bonus episodes, coming very soon. 

Hope you enjoy this first ever Shop Talk episode, with Brett and Shuyler. 

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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I will tell anyone who dares listen that handmade bootmaking—and perhaps specifically, cowboy bootmaking—is the highest form of leatherwork as functional art. And then I started paying attention a bit more to saddlemaking and was like damn ok maybe they’re tied.

Parker, Colorado-based custom bootmaker Holly Henry knows a ton about both. Holly grew up riding horses outside Houston, Texas, and was, quite remarkably, a professional photographer by her early teens. While studying photography in college, she took a shoemaking course—which changed everything.

After some skill-informing detours through millinery (that’s hat-making!), tailoring, and, yes, intensive saddle repair, Holly began training to make cowboy boots, moved to Colorado, and struck out on her own as an independent bootmaker. Which is exactly where we pick her up, on the Shoecast.

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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In the US, there are schools for everything—of course you can study business, or to become a doctor. But also if you want to be an electrician, or an airplane mechanic—someone can teach you that. And then you’ve got UConn, which has offered an apparently quite intense puppetmaking major, every year since 1964. 

So why not for shoemaking? 

Examples do exist, but they are far too scant—you can head to Atlanta to learn shoemaking from Marcel Mrsan, but that’s far from the only work he’s doing every day. Brooklyn Shoe Space, Cobbler Bushwick, and the Chicago School of Shoemaking are all fantastic and lighting shoemaking sparks every day, although they currently cater more to hobbyists. DW Frommer’s school in Montana was a cowboy bookmaking bastion, but it closed when he passed last year. 

So what about a multi-year, school that teaches shoe design AND making? 

I just visited one. The College for Creative Studies in Detroit, the impressive design school which has grown a full degree program that heavily involves shoemaking. 

I spent two days at CCS this past summer to meet with its program chair Aki Choklat, along with bespoke shoemaking toolmaker and faculty member Tom Carbone, plus a whole bunch of very invested students who really knew their way around a sole stitcher. 

What Aki and Tom are building at CCS is impressive, and dare I say quite needed, in a landscape where it’s easier to pick up shoemaking than ever before—as long as you do it online, by yourself—but far too hard in the United States to find quality hands-on teaching. 

And so we talked about that, how the CCS program came about and has grown, what the hell AI is going to do to the shoe industry, and plenty more. 

https://www.ccsdetroit.edu/
https://www.instagram.com/akichoklat/?hl=en
https://www.akichoklat.com/

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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Often, vintage clothing and footwear's defining quality IS quality. As in, its actual construction and materials, how well it was made, way back when. In most cases, it wouldn’t even be here today if it wasn’t. 

The footwear world we explore on this podcast is absolutely the exception, and a beautiful one, to the core rule of the 21st century: most stuff we buy and use and wear today is, well, kinda shit. It’s made to break down, or just break. It’s SUPPOSED to go into the trash, so you just get get more. Vintage is a reminder that things weren’t always that way. 

Exploring why most clothes and footwear used to be great, when most simply aren’t now, is just one of the reasons I was so excited to chat with Brian Davis, who’s been finding and selling some of the absolute best vintage menswear and boots for over 15 years. 

Brian’s store Wooden Sleepers, located in Tuckahoe New York about a 40 minute train ride from Manhattan, is a time capsule of American military, outdoors, Ivy, and workwear, all of it still kicking hard. Brian’s got a whole bunch of thoughts on why, and why that changed—as well as a fantastic outlook on the current vintage landscape, shoe tribalism, materials that age beautifully, and his absolutely wonderful local cobbler, Frank. 

https://wooden-sleepers.com/

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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15 years ago Viberg was pretty firmly Canada’s most hardcore logging and industrial boot company. Since Brett Viberg took over the reins of the nearly 100-year-old brand from his father Glen, Viberg has in many ways completely changed the high-end, recraftable boot market—most notably with its Service Boot, which became a legitimate game-shifting icon, and inspiration to many. 

In our last chat in 2021, Viberg was in the midst of directional shift again, although you could only catch traces of what that would mean in the years to come. Now, two and a half years later, Brett’s vision is starting to present itself in a product line that’s in some ways the classic Viberg of the last decade, and in others something totally different. 

And so I poked and prodded Brett on what’s been happening out in public and behind the scenes, as we also traced back his personal Viberg timeline to understand how in the hell a Canadian logging boot company is somehow now creating some of the most well-made production dress shoes in the entire world. 

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2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.

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