The Stitchdown Shoecast
Exploring the wonderful world of quality footwear, how it’s made, and all the things we love about it. Check out Stitchdown.com for shoe and boot reviews, interviews with industry titans, profiles, release info, and more.
The (Mostly) Complete History of Cowboy Boots, with Bata Shoe Museum Director Elizabeth Semmelhack
Last time Elizabeth Semmelhack—Director and Senior Curator of the Toronto's exceptional Bata Shoe Museum—was on the Shoecast, she ran down a (mostly) complete history of boots, overall. It was excellent.
This time Elizabeth is back to focus purely on cowboy boots—which is exactly what she's been doing for years while writing Rough & Ready, the most recent in a hugely rich (if far too truncated) pantheon of exceptional cowboy boot books.
Where did cowboy boots emerge from? The heels, the tops, the toe shapes—when did those come into play? What do we all have t...
ACL's Michael Williams on Misguided Shoe Recs & The "Disappearing Middle" of Quality Footwear
Michael Williams is sometimes a “marketer who hates marketing,” who has helped many of the great US manufacturing brands, up to and including Red Wing. Other times he he’s writing his often menswear focused newsletter, the quietly massively influential A Continuous Lean.
A while back he pre-invented the idea now used by every single temporary market you now see everywhere, with his Pop Up Flea concept. More often than seems possible, he’s doing something or other with the bon vivant they call David Coggins, whether that’s recording their Central Division podcast, or putting together their new n...
Carmina Shoemaker's Carmina Albaladejo on Family Tradition, Global Retail, and Custom Shoes
Carmina Albaladejo heads US operations for the exquisite Spanish shoemaker with the exact same (first) name as her.
In this Stitchdown Shoecast episode we discuss how six generations of family history led to the founding of the Carmina brand, manufacturing in Spain, Carmina's growing US and global retail strategy (and the crucial importance of physical shoe stores), the brand's top-flight online customizer tool, the new leveled-up Albaladejo Collection, and plenty more.
https://www.carminashoemaker.com/
Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the i...
The New Thing in Footwear Leather? 145-Year-Old Veg-Tanner Hermann Oak.
Hermann Oak has been tanning leather in St. Louis since 1881, and they pretty much still do it the same way—one way, which of course is veg-tanning. Traditionally a major player in the equestrian leather world, Hermann Oak is edging into the quality footwear space in a hugely exciting way.
So I chatted with Hermann Oak President Drew Gulick about the tanner's deep history, how making footwear leather is different from equestrian or tooling leather, and of course their core bridle, harness, and latigo products.
Come see Hermann Oak and PLENTY of other tanneries, shoe-/boot...
Nathan Florsheim is Proudly Working Slower Than Ever
Back in 2021, I got a great email from a young bootmaker named Nathan Florsheim who wanted to chat. Boy am I glad I took that call.
About a year later I had Nathan—great great great grandson of Milton Florsheim, yes, THAT Florsheim—on the Shoecast. Four years and 130 handmade pairs later, Nathan is absolutely rolling as a custom bootmaker who has truly seemed to find his own space, one that so many clients want to inhabit as well.
So along with the man they call Ticho, we caught up about what’s changed in that tim...
Goods & Services' Rory Fortune on Red Wing Collabs and When to Pull Back on Customization
This week on the Shoecast we’re bringing back Rory Fortune, founder of Los Angeles-based Goods & Services, which continues to be one of the most interesting footwear operations out there.
We had Rory on back in 2024, and with the Goods & Services business and product range expanding like crazy, it seemed high time to get a closer look at exactly how Rory and team convert sneakers to a resoleable welted construction—yes the video version of this episode is up on Youtube—and catch up on plenty more.
How is the role of the modern footwear designer...
Bespoke Cowboy Bootmaker Zephan Parker's Formula to Keep Craft Alive
How do we keep craft alive in an over-technological society? Is it via the individual maker? Or more of a collective workshop approach?
Houston-based bespoke cowboy bootmaker Zephan Parker has plenty of thoughts on all of it.
Zephan used to write graffiti and listen to hip hop while wearing Ralph Lauren. Now he runs a custom bespoke cowboy boot workshop in Houston, Texas. All those things, it turns out, are very connected. I swear.
Zephan and I get into plenty on this one, including their entire range of offerings, how the absence of des...
The Artistically Twisting Journey of Brooklyn's Bespoke Shoemaker, Anne Marika Verploegh Chassé
My chat this week is with Brooklyn -based bespoke shoemaker, educator, and artist Anne Marika Verploegh Chassé, aka STIEFELwerk.
Two decades ago, Marika came at shoemaking from a fine arts background, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen her work. After years learning the craft under many of the great shoe and bookmaking teachers, today Marika focuses on the use of veg-tan leather—often from the wholly unique Hudson Valley tannery Pergamena—to create hugely intriguing and distinctive custom, filly handmade footwear from her Brooklyn apartment-turned-workshop.
In the chat, we get into Marika showing up at her f...
Vintage Boot Wishlists and Reconsidering Tassel Loafers: It's Ticho on the Shoebag!
It's Shoebag time for Shoecast season 17. Which means it's time for a serious dose of Ticho, who joins me to unpack all the biggest listener questions.
Why are we both suddenly wearing the same barefoot-style shoes nonstop? Which iconic footwear figure from the past (aka, dead) would we love to spend a weekend in a deeply isolated cabin with? Why do we have so much ennui generated by hiker-derived fashionshoes? How in the world does someone size up a leather jacket properly? Who's this JohnnyWorks guy and what's going on in his workshop? Is Ben actually turning...
Why Making Things By Hand Has Never Been More Important, w/ Cowboy Bootmaker Emily Boksenbaum
When I met Emily Boksenbaum at our Maker’s Day 2025 conference in Chicago, I knew I had to get her on the Shoecast.
Emily’s always made stuff. First it was art growing up, which led to a focus on fiber material studies in art school. Next came leather tooling, prop-making and other “creative odd jobs,” before going into corporate footwear design. That didn’t quite hit for her, which meant it was finally time to figure out how to make some cowboy boots. After training under some of the great makers and teachers in the space, she moved...
Why It’s Harder Than Ever to Start a Shoe Brand, w/ the Shoe Snob Justin FitzPatrick
Justin FitzPatrick aka the Shoe Snob on fiery times in the comments section, what a dress shoe customer even looks like in 2026, button boots (obviously), and why it’s never been harder to start a shoe brand than right now.
Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membership
https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/
We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chicago 2026—the world's fair of shoes and boots and l...
Skip Horween & Nicks Boots' Shuyler Mowe—Live from Boot Camp Chicago 2025
In November 2025, we did a thing. Stitchdown’s Boot Camp 2025 Chicago was a quality footwear mega-expo, a materials trade show, a crossroads of the industry we love, and one big ol’ multi-day party with my favorite community in the world.
As part of that weekend in Chicago, I sat down with Shuyler Mowe of Nicks Boots and the one and only Skip Horween for a live Shoecast taping at the excellent Hoste distillery.
Skip and Shuyler are both multi-generational leaders in their spaces, and getting them to open up about how they work together to develo...
Franklin & Poe's Andrew Li on Where Retail's Going, Malls, and The Perfect White Tee
My chat this week is with Andrew Li of Philadelphia’s Franklin & Poe, one of the best shops in the US for serious quality footwear, denim, and more.
I got to know Andrew over the last few years the old fashioned way—seeing him in person, sitting down, and chatting entirely too deeply about some boots and shoes and denim. Which is pretty much exactly what Andrew and team have done every day since 2016 with customers in Philly’s Fishtown neighborhood, both at their original location and the new shop they had opened only days before we taped t...
Thursday Boot Co.'s Nolan Walsh on Their Own León Factory, Last Obsessiveness, and The Comfort Question
The joke has always been that Thursday Boot Company’s Connor Wilson keeps his co-founder Nolan Walsh trapped in a factory working on the product. Turns out that joke actually true—except Nolan is the one very eagerly choosing to imprison himself.
That certainly hasn’t lessened since Thursday opened its own in-house manufacturing facility in North American bootmaking capital Leon Mexico—just 11 years after Thursday launched a Kickstarter campaign to try and sell a few boots. Pretty wild stuff.
Nolan and I pretty much cover everything in this one—the full version of the Thursday or...
Shoebag w/ Ticho: The Best Shoemaking Teachers, Arch Support, and a LOT of Butter
If you came to this podcast about shoes and boots and leather hoping that you’d get to listen to extended conversations about imported cultured butter, you’ve made a fantastic call.
Because this, dear listeners, is the Shoebag, in which myself and the legend they know as Tichoblanco answer listener questions about roughout Chelsea boots, arch support in surprising lasts, who we want to teach us to make boots…and imported cultured butter.
And burritos. And bagels! And diners. And waffles, which were totally unrelated to the diner conversation. And, New Jersey Costco gas station...
Red Wing Heritage President George Curleigh on Retail, Time Capsules, and The Red Wing Way
George Curleigh has been president of Red Wing’s heritage division since 2019, in which time he’s been able to enjoy a list of very fun things including a worldwide pandemic, a factory shut-down, a cyber-attack, a periodically dwindling labor force, a broken supply chain for US-made components, and his OWN CHILDREN stealing his boots.
So what’s the general feeling in Red Wing, Minnesota, according to George? Actually pretty fantastic. Retail expansion is going hugely well, especially in Asia. The European and North American markets are showing a ton of strength. A new factory recently came online...
How to Revive The Cobbling Industry? Teach it in High School—and it's Already Working.
This past fall, Matt Paisley launched a shoe repair program at Colorado's Thunder Ridge high school, with nearly two dozen students taking the plunge and immediately being drawn into the program, skill development, and practical hands-on cobbling work.
I had Matt lay out a blueprint for how he navigated making the shoe repair program happen, and the curriculum he’s been teaching in the first, legitimately monumental go-round.
The fact that Matt’s program exists is a wonderful and inspiring story on its own—as is all the remarkable help that’s been offered by the repair...
SERES Founder Vanessa Arroyo on León, Mexico's Remarkable Shoemaking Culture
My chat this week is with Vanessa Arroyo, founder and designer of SERES Footwear, a focused line designed from the ground up with high-quality natural materials in a way that’s not often seen in the women’s space.
Once known as “the weird girl in high school making her own clothes” and thrown into shoemaking almost by chance, Vanessa fell in love with the art and craft of shoemaking between New York City, Chicago, and Leon Mexico, where she found unexpected meaning in her Mexican-American heritage—and sometimes had to stop working when it was raining too hard...
Sprezza's Clayton Chambers on Timeless Loafers, Gorpy Boots, and Quality
This week on the Shoecast our chat is with Clayton Chambers, founder of the Substack newsletter Sprezza and general menswear individual about the world.
After running through the footwear signposts in his own life, from churchboy penny loafers to the Clark’s Wallabees he just can’t quit, Clayton digs in on footwear brands in and outside the welted space he’s really feeling, the rise of menswear brand- and product line-building done the slow and steady way, and why the younger generation might just be the unlock to a more widespread quality revival.
https://www.spre...
Ticho is BACK to Talk Østmo x Iron Boots' Lore—and Next Step
The one and only Tichoblanco, aka Tichoblancoshoes, aka just plain old Ticho, is BACK.
Where’s he been?Well he’ll tell ya all about that. What’s he been up to? The biggest answer to that is: happily grinding on his Østmo x Iron Boots project along with Cheng and Kai from Iron Boots, and Østmo boots mad genius maker Lars Jensen.
Lars was actually our first-ever guest on this show, back at a time when he was still making any boot he wanted, in any size, and any leather, and getting hundreds of people to...
Boot Camp 2025 Chicago: Exhibitors + Events Rundown
In part two of a tag-team with the Full Grain Podcast, the ever-handsome/charming Phil Kalas grills Ben on what to expect at Stitchdown's Boot Camp Chicago 2025 mega-expo and footwear-loving community epicenter this November.
Japanese and Indonesian boot brands? Tanneries galore? Truly excellent women's footwear? The world's best care products? Red Wing & SB Foot??? Yes indeed. And oh so much more.
Wherever you are in this world, do everything you can to get to Chicago on and around November 8th, 2025—you really, really won't hate it.
https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/
https://www.i...
BONUS PREVIEW: Brett Viberg Community Q&A at the Viberg NYC Shop
Last week we had our Stitchdown community's first gathering at the new Viberg NYC store—an honestly fabulous-looking little shop in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood that’s full of Viberg’s core classic product like stitchdown 2030 and 310 last service boots, but also the loafers and monk straps and split-toe derbies that represent a wholly new—and often confounding for longtime fans—direction for the 94 year old Canadian manufacturer.
Amidst the excellent chatter and beers and everyone trying on seemingly every shoe in the shop, we hosted an audience Q&A with Brett Viberg, who gave a ton of insight on...
(FREE) BONUS: A Look Inside China with Motiv & Arch Support Project's Samuel Wei
FREE Shoecast Bonus Episode—we've got plenty more for Stitchdown Premium subsribers
Jason Pecarich of Division Road and Motiv/Arch Support Project co-founder Samuel Wei came on to discuss ASP's legitimately unique approach to footwear, how Motiv broke through Division Road’s no-China policy, and how Chinese customers are finding themselves more drawn towards high-quality heritage products.
Also: the ways tariffs are affecting Chinese brands from an export and domestic standpoint, and why certain special Chinese products might reasonably cost as much as things made elsewhere.
More than any episode we’ve published, this one...
How Japan's Astounding Bootmaking Culture Grew—And Where It's Going
It’s not a stretch to say there is no quality footwear culture quite like Japan’s. But WHY does the Japanese passion for making and wearing great boot and shoes exist?
Well, I had to go to Tokyo to find out.
As the final piece of our five-part Sole Searching: Tokyo YouTube series, I sat down with Michiya Suzuki—ex-Red Wing Japan GM and co-founder of The 2 Monkeys boot brand—to crack it open.
Turns out, it’s part Americana, part rebellion, and part deep cultural reverence for craft.
Michiya walked me thro...
How to Do YouTube Product Reviews Without Losing Your Soul, with The Iron Snail
The Iron Snail, aka Michael Kristy, is one of my favorite YouTube inhabitants, thanks to his legitimately unique approach to reviewing, historicizing, and manufacturing crazily high-quality footwear and clothing.
I sat down with Michael to chat about his favorite historical nuggets from the footwear he's covered, how he manages to deliver accurate information in a world that often lacks it, where his collaborative footwear projects are going, how damn hard small-scale quality manufacturing is in the US (and basically anywhere), and how and why people start caring about expensive stuff that's actually made the right way.
Developing Leather for Red Wing and More with SB Foot's Lacy Schumann
Since 1986, SB Foot Tanning Company is most known as the tannery owned by Red Wing, and with good reason: every bit of leather used on Red Wing Heritage footwear is developed and made by SB Foot just a few miles from Red Wing’s US manufacturing facility.
But the tannery itself and its relationship with Red Wing stretch much further back—to the late 1800s. And SB Foot creates leather for far more than just its neighbor in Red Wing, Minnesota—everyone from solo makers, to Russell Moccasin, to the US military.
Lacy Schumann has spent...
Women's Shoe Icon Stuart Weitzman on Nudists, Aretha Franklin & The First Shoe He Ever Sold
No conversation about the all-time great women's shoe designers is complete without a very long segue into Stuart Weitzman. Born into a shoemaking family who manufactured for decades in longtime US shoemaking hub Haverhill, Massachusetts, Weitzman quickly established himself as the rare shoemaker to both the stars AND literally any woman who just wanted a fantastic pair of shoes.
For this chat, we covered why comfort matters so much and how to make it happen, why Stuart ended up in Spain after US manufacturing went kaput, that time Aretha Franklin pulled her shoes off at the AMAs t...
How to Become a Bootmaker, With Oldspeed MFG's Dave Corey and New River Boot's Dave Mills
I had an absolute gas with Dave Mills of New River Boot, and Dave Corey of Oldspeed Manufacturing on this one. After years of being two of my favorite people on the internet to talk about footwear with, I was lucky enough to spend time with both of them last October at our Stitchdown’s Boot Camp expo—and I guess I needed more. Both Daves have in some ways followed similar paths into the craft and business, and in other ways have diverged—which I found as fascinating, instructive, and inspiring as the overlaps.
This episode is a lo...
Custom Cowboy Bootmaker Jake Houston on Preserving Knowledge, León Mexico, and Zebra Races
About a half hour from Reno, there’s a place called Virginia City Nevada, where everything feels like it’s 1859 and the US’s largest silver deposit was just discovered. The bars say saloon and look the part. The cemetery is definitely haunted. And of course there’s a custom hatmaker—who shares a space in one of Virgnia City’s oldest surviving buildings with bespoke cowboy bootmaker Jake Houston.
Jake Houston wasn’t the first person to fall victim to the wonderful folly of “the boots I want are too expensive, so I’ll just figure out how to make the...
Seiji McCarthy is Making Some of the World's Greatest American Bespoke Shoes—In Japan
Tokyo-based, half-American/half-Japanese Seiji McCarthy discusses his uniquely late path into shoemaking, the development of his vintage-Americana-inspired bespoke line, why he feels more American in Japan, and why it’s sometimes better if your bespoke shoemaker doesn't make your shoes entirely themselves.
https://www.seijimccarthy.com/
Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membership
https://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/
We'd better see you at Stitchdown Chi...
Is Turriff Functional Footwear Making the Best-Quality Barefoot Shoe on the Market?
This week we've got a chat with Andrew Turriff, a Canadian shoemaker who studied at Cordwainer’s Footwear Design program in London, worked for some big sneaker brands, and did pattern work for fellow Canadians Viberg and time in the orthopedic world before deciding to make a zero-drop, anatomical, barefoot shoe with of top-end materials—and also make it resolable, which it’s otherwise quite tough to find.
Turriff Functional Footwear's launch model recently became available and I’ve been wearing and loving the shoes for over a month now. Are my feet stronger? I have no idea. Am...
How Tariffs Are Already Impacting the Footwear Industry, with FDRA CEO Matt Priest
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 m...
All the Shoes & Boots Derek Guy Loves—and a Few He Really Doesn't—From Bespoke to Workboots
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 abo...
What Opie Way's Justin James Lost in Hurricane Helene—and What He Found
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 ou...
Skateboard Legend Jamie Thomas Goes Inside a 300° Oven To Explain How Skate Shoes are Made
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.
How to Make Your Leather Footwear Last Literally (Possibly) Forever, With Pure Polish's Andy Vaughn
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 th...
Shoecast BONUS Episode Preview: Shop Talk With Brett Viberg & Shuyler Mowe of Nicks Boots
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 b...
Holly Henry on the Cowboy Bootmaking Community's Sustaining Power (Also: Saddles)
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...
Aki Choklat on Building a Shoemaking College Program From Scratch
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...
Vintage King Brian Davis of Wooden Sleepers on Why Everything We Buy Sucks These Days
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. Vin...
