Most of what separates one pair of leather shoes from another sits under the foot, where nobody can see it. Construction is the method by which the upper, the insole and the outsole are joined. It decides how a shoe flexes, how it keeps water out, how it moulds to the foot, and how many times it can be resoled. Three methods account for nearly everything worth buying: Blake stitching, Goodyear welting and hand welting. Goodyear welted shoes are the usual benchmark for good ready-made footwear. In our workshop in Copenhagen we hand welt, which is the older method the Goodyear machine was built to imitate.
Blake stitching
A Blake shoe is closed with a single seam. The upper is pulled over the last and its edges are turned under the insole. Then one chain stitch is driven up through the outsole, through the folded-in upper leather, and into the insole. That is the whole construction: one seam, no welt.
The machine that does this dates from the 1850s and it is fast. With no welt standing out between upper and sole, the outsole can be trimmed close to the line of the last, which is why Blake suits slim shapes and why so much Italian footwear uses it. The shoe is light, thin underfoot, and it bends easily from the first day.
The costs are real. The seam runs from the outside of the sole into the shoe, so water has a direct path along the thread. Resoling needs a Blake machine, and a repairer without one will either turn the job away or glue a new sole on, which ends the shoe's working life. Every resole means piercing the insole again in roughly the same line of holes. Two or three resoles is a fair expectation before the insole is too perforated to hold.
Goodyear welting
Goodyear welting splits the job into two seams and introduces a third component, the welt, a narrow strip of leather that runs around the perimeter of the shoe.
In the standard machine version, a rib of canvas or linen tape, called gemming, is cemented to the underside of the insole. An inseam machine sews the welt to that rib, catching the lasted upper in the same pass. The cavity inside the rib is then filled, usually with cork or a cork and adhesive compound. Finally an outsole stitcher sews the outsole to the welt, around the outside edge of the shoe, where you can see the stitching.
The gain is repair. The outsole seam lives on the welt, outside the shoe, so a repairer can cut those stitches, pull the worn sole off and sew on a fresh one without touching the upper or the insole. A well-made Goodyear welted shoe will take many resoles. The construction is also drier than Blake, because the only path through to your foot is the inseam, and that sits above the welt rather than under the ball of the foot.
The weakness is the gemming. It is fabric held on with adhesive, and it carries the entire inseam. After enough years, enough wet mornings and enough hot radiators, it can tear away from the insole, and at that point the repair is a rebuild rather than a resole. The cork filling also settles unevenly, and the rib holds the upper a few millimetres away from the foot at the edges, so the shoe takes longer to feel like yours.
Hand welting
Hand welting is what the Goodyear machine was designed to reproduce, and the difference is not sentimental. There is no gemming and no fabric anywhere in the construction.
The insole is a thick piece of vegetable tanned leather. The shoemaker cuts into it with a welt knife and lifts a wall of leather that stands proud around the perimeter, leaving it attached to the insole along its base. That wall is the holdfast. The welt and the lasted upper are then sewn to the holdfast by hand, one stitch at a time, using a curved awl to make each hole, two boar bristles to lead the thread from both sides, and a linen thread run with wax.
Because the holdfast is carved out of the insole itself, there is nothing glued that can let go. The stitch never comes through the top face of the insole, so there is no seam under the foot at all. And because that insole is thick veg tan leather rather than a board, it takes an impression of the wearer's foot over the first few weeks of wear, and keeps it.
The price is time. The inseam alone is several hours of work per pair, and it cannot be hurried. That is why most shoes are not made this way.
Blake stitch vs Goodyear welt: telling them apart with a shoe in hand
- Look at the edge. Turn the shoe on its side and look at the join between upper and sole. A strip of leather standing between them, with a line of stitching running along it, means the shoe is welted. If the sole meets the upper directly, with no strip and no stitching on the edge, it is not.
- Look at the bottom. Stitching visible on the underside of the sole but nothing on the edge points to Blake. No stitching anywhere means the sole is cemented, though some cemented soles carry a moulded groove that imitates a stitch line.
- Look inside. Lift out any loose insock. A line of thread running around the perimeter under your foot is the Blake seam.
- Flex it. Hold the heel in one hand and the toe in the other and bend. A Blake shoe folds easily out of the box. A welted shoe resists at first, then breaks in along a single crease across the ball.
Separating hand welting from Goodyear welting is harder, since from the outside the two can look identical. One clue is the waist, because hand welting allows the sole to be stitched close to the upper there, giving that narrow, bevelled shape. The other is simply asking. A workshop that hand welts will say so plainly and will tell you who sewed the inseam.
The honest comparison
Blake is the lightest and most flexible, and it allows the slimmest silhouette. It is also the least weatherproof and has the shortest repair life. For a dress shoe worn indoors in dry weather, none of that may matter.
Goodyear welting is the best compromise available at scale, a genuinely repairable shoe at a price a machine can support. The gemming is a real long-term risk rather than a theoretical one, but plenty of Goodyear welted shoes outlast their owners' interest in them.
Hand welting gives the longest life and the closest fit, because the insole is solid leather that moulds to the foot and nothing depends on adhesive. It cannot be made quickly, and there is no version of it that is cheap.
Why we hand welt
We hand welt because it is the construction that survives being repaired indefinitely, and because it is the only one that lets the insole become a record of the foot that wears it. Our uppers are French and Italian calf, lined in calf, the welt thread is linen, and the soles are leather so they can be replaced. On a bespoke commission the same shoemaker who lasted the shoe sews the inseam, which means one person is accountable for the fit and the construction together.
The shapes we build this way are in our oxford shoes, derby shoes and boots. If you would rather have a pair built on your own last, read about bespoke, or book a consultation and bring a pair you already own so we can look at the construction together.