Bespoke shoes must rank among the world’s most luxurious gifts. They are made of high-quality materials and shaped to fit every contour of the recipient’s foot — comfort in a shoe box.
But how does someone in, say, London gift a pair someone in, say, Singapore?
Yohei Fukuda, who crafts shoes in his Tokyo workshop, admitted that arranging a custom-shoe experience was not easy. But he said it was well worth the effort: “The main difference is that bespoke shoes can fit the client’s lifestyle. We can listen to our clients and suggest styles, leather and details of shoes.”
His business creates three categories of shoes: Bespoke, which is the couture version of footwear, with every handmade detail matching the customer’s desires; made-to-order, which allows customers to customize a handmade pair within certain limits; and ready-to-wear, which is made from Mr. Fukuda’s designs but stitched on a sewing machine.
In addition to welcoming customers in Tokyo, Mr. Fukuda, 44, regularly travels for trunk shows around the world, with Hong Kong and Singapore on his itinerary next year. And two businesses — the Armoury, the men’s clothing retailer with locations in New York and Hong Kong, and Mason & Smith, an upscale shoe store in Singapore — stock a selection of Mr. Fukuda’s ready-to-wear shoes as well as fitting shoes, which are used for made-to-order purchases.
Mr. Fukuda’s website offers made-to-order and ready-to-wear shoes, which can be purchased online and shipped internationally, along with accessories like card holders, tote bags and limited-edition items like leather teddy bears.
A Black Oxford
Mr. Fukuda acknowledged that he probably would not be making shoes today if it had not been for a bad breakup that dashed his plans to move to Los Angeles. At the time, he was finishing high school in Toyama, his hometown on the coast of the Sea of Japan, but he had no plans for higher education. Because of his love for British clothes and shoes, he ultimately decided to move to England to study English.
While he was studying at a language school in Brighton in 1999-2000, a classmate asked him to come along on a visit to the Northampton Museum & Art Gallery, which has a renowned collection of more than 15,000 shoes.
“I saw a pair of black Oxfords that was made in 1920s, and I thought the shoes looked so different, even though it’s just a black Oxford,” Mr. Fukuda said during a recent interview. “I was so impressed and I decided to study shoemaking.”
He spent two years at the Tresham Institute in Wellingborough, England, then worked and trained at several British heritage shoe brands including John Lobb and Edward Green, and learned to make handmade shoes.
He came back to Japan in 2006. “I wanted to do something different,” he said recently, “like make my own shoes in my own way.”
Two years later, he established his brand, working out of a small room in his apartment that he lived in with his wife and newborn. But when his baby started crawling (“the floor was covered with nails”), he knew it was time to move. He established his current three-level office and workshop in the upscale Aoyama district of Tokyo.
“What has made Yohei Fukuda particularly famous and acclaimed all around the world, is the fact that he has the whole package,” wrote Jesper Ingevaldsson, whose blog, Shoegazing, focuses on classic shoes.
After learning about Mr. Fukuda online, Mr. Ingevaldsson bought a pair of bespoke Fukuda shoes during a trip to Tokyo in the mid-2010s — and he has purchased five more since then. “He’s a great shoe designer and shoemaker, with a great mix of traditional British style and a more modern Japanese touch, that is the base, of course,” he said.
20 Decisions
A display of glossy samples — including Oxfords, Derbys, Chelsea boots and loafers in burgundy, black, cream and brown — greets visitors to Mr. Fukuda’s workshop. (His signature style is called the long-vamp Oxford; vamp is the term for the upper part of the shoe that covers the toes and the instep.)
Appointments are customary for bespoke-shoe orders. “I take many photos of the customer’s feet, especially, and then they decide the model, leather and details,” Mr. Fukuda said as he displayed forms that listed nearly 20 decisions on such details as toe shape and polish and finish preferences like cream, wax, high shine and matte.
Based on the measurements, Mr. Fukuda creates a last — a wooden mold of the customer’s foot — and a pattern. Unlike many shoemakers, including his teachers in England, he makes a trial shoe, arranges a fitting, creates the final pair and does final fittings.
A pair of bespoke shoes takes 140 hours to complete; a pair of made-to-order, about 50 hours. That is why Mr. Fukuda and his staff of nine can only make about 90 bespoke pairs and 180 made-to-order pairs a year.
His fee starts at 700,000 yen ($4,595) for bespoke shoes; about ¥350,000 for made-to-order. At the moment, Mr. Fukuda said, he wants the workshop to get through some of its backlog, so he is accepting bespoke orders only from repeat customers, although all made-to-order requests are still being accepted.
On one recent day, five staff members were busy working: One delicately brushed glue on a sole, while another was reinforcing the stitching just below the eyelets on an Oxford. (“It takes 10 minutes by hand to stitch one, versus 20 seconds by machine,” Mr. Fukuda said.)
He noted that handmade shoes could last almost a lifetime. “We can change soles many times,” he said. “The life of shoes depends on how the shoes are worn and taken care of. When I lived in England, I did shoe repairs for bespoke shoes that had been worn for over 30 years regularly.”
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