Set aside an hour with your shoe assistant. Bring photographs, a pair you already love, or nothing at all. Most commissions begin with a sentence rather than a drawing.
Two — Measure
Your feet, to the millimetre
A Japanese infoot 3D scanner records both feet — length, girth, instep height, the difference between the left and the right, which almost everyone has and almost nobody knows about. Those numbers become your last.
Three — Materials
Which leather, and which colour
Calf, cordovan, suede, or an exotic hide with its CITES papers. Then the finish: a single tone, or a patina built by hand in layers so no two pairs come out alike.
Your order reaches the workshop within one working day. What follows is roughly forty operations, almost none of which leave a visible trace on the finished shoe — the welt stitched rather than glued, so the pair can be resoled for as long as you own it.
Five — Fitting
A trial shoe, before the real one
You stand, you walk, and you are asked specific questions. Pressure across the joint, looseness at the heel, the arch. Every answer is recorded as an adjustment to the last — width, arch, lining — before a single panel of the final pair is cut.
Six — Finishing
Seven days, then they are yours
The revised pair is finished within seven working days. Finishing is mostly the removal of evidence that any of this happened. Your assistant calls when the workshop delivers.
“A last is not a copy of a foot. It is an argument about how a foot should be held — and I only get to make that argument once per customer.”
Pak Suyanto
Master shoemaker · 22 years at the bench
Begin a commission
Fittings are held at Pacific Place and, one week each month, at Tunjungan Plaza. Tell us which you would prefer and roughly when.
