It's not always easy to interpret three dimensional shapes in two dimensional photographs but above is a side by side comparison of a W. S. Foster hand made shoe (on the left) and a high quality machine-made shoe. Though each shoe fits the same foot, it's obvious that the hand made shoe is narrower and follows the shape of the foot more closely.
Today's machines just can't make shoes that follow the curves of the feet as well as a person with hand tools and I think it likely that leather shoes will disappear altogether before they do (it's telling that Gaziano & Girling obtained its best-in-category shape on its machine-made offerings not with modern technology but with a century-old machine they located).
The differences in shape are more apparent from the bottom. The machine-made shoe on the left is wider from toe to heel and particularly at the waist, and the upper of course just follows along.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Hand vs. Machine Made Shoe Shapes
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15 comments:
Will, are you telling me that with today's technology, with CPUs having tens of millions of transistors in a square inch and ubiquitous satellites launched every day, no one can design a machine that makes a shoe with a less bulky shape?
Hmm. I think differently. The shoe industry didn't catch up to today's technology. The big companies care about volume, and the small shops (like Edward Green) don't have the resources nor the people to improve their machines.
What is the small piece of metal on the front of the hand-made shoe? What purpose does it serve?
what do you think of the sartorialist blog?
Testing, I wrote that there is no machine that can do it today. Go ahead and design one, yours will be the first.
Ruroni, the toe tap drastically reduces wear on the front of the sole, which is where my shoes would otherwise wear out first. Sole replacements are expensive.
Mark, I think the sartorialist takes much better photos than I do.
Equally tellingly, the wear on the hand made shoe is slap bang in the middle of the sole...
Testing,
we've seen time and time again the difference between a machine made suit and a garment made in the basements of Saville Row. What makes you think a computer can replicate a hand made shoe and better than a computer can replicate a hand made suit?
Hmm,
would have been easier to visualize if both shoes showed the same side. ;-) hard to call the differences since one is on the left, and the other, on the other!
The point is:
Volume-produced machine made shoes, require allowances for a variety of feet in each size.
Not to mention that cost-wise, customizing the machine to make 1 pair of shoes (not impossible), would be rather silly in economic practice.
Bespoken shoes, by cobblers that specialize in one foot at a time manufacture, have almost zero costs in terms of 'setting up' the cobbler to sew the shoe together. And more importantly, of course, they fit the foot better. If not, its not bespoke!
will, aside from the format, what do you think of the content of the sartorialist blog? not so much as regards the younger fashionista shots, but the more continental take on fashion (like the bolder colors, more trim fits of the italians)?
Mark, I don't follow it regularly.
Great post, Will. Any difference in function between the 2 pairs of shoe trees?
Hinged trees should be a bit better than the sprung version over time but I don't know that I've ever been able to tell a difference.
There is obviously a misunderstanding on how shoe machines (the one's licensed by Goodyear, therefore goodyear-welted) work. BTW: If the shoe is ready to wear (RTW) and no machine is used, it is stitched by hand.
The process of manufacturing the shoe with a last specially designed for you (bespoke) and a last for "the masses" (RTW) is exactly the same.
Might the inabiltiy of machine made shoes to replicate the curves of hand made ones have something to do with time? I understand that hand made shoes are left on the last for some considerable time to obtain their shape. This is of course impossible in a factory where time is money.
In case anyone's interested, there's a thread that touches on this at the London Lounge. It's in The Bespoke Forum; the topic is "Shoe lasts -- how long does it take to make one?"
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