The Stitchdown Shoecast Stitchdown
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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.
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Chisos Founder Will Roman on How Cowboy Boots Will Save Us All
For the closeout episode of Shoecast season 11, Ben sits down with Will Roman, founder of Chisos Boots, a young and growing brand out of Austin, Texas that offers one of the best values in a legitimately well made, well designed cowboy boot.They cover how Chisos in some ways started with a lemonade stand, how Will ended up in León Mexico and fell in love with a small father-son workshop that makes Chisos to this day, where Chisos veers from cowboy bootmaking tradition and where it's ext...
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Exploring What "Handmade" Truly Means With Leatherworker and Bootmaker Bob Henderson
For the penultimate episode of the 11th season of the Stitchdown Shoecast, I’m quite excited indeed to be chatting with the just ridiculously talented man they call Bob Henderson. Bob is the operations manager at Popov Leather, the bustling leathergoods workshop over yonder in British Columbia, Canada—and over the last few years has been sucked up by the indomitable tractor beam known as bootmaking, operating as Bob Henderson Handmade Boots.In a nice and rangy chat, Bob and I get into how Pop...
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Fritz Sr. and Jr. of Seidel Tanning on the Art, Science, and Challenges of Making Leather
This time Ben sits down with two, count ‘em TWO Fritz Seidels: Fritz Jr. and Fritz Sr., who every day are continuing on the tradition of the four-generation, 79-year-old Siedel Tanning Corp in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to getting the lowdown on some longtime Seidel favorite leathers and overlooked gems, we get into Seidel’s history and fluid approach to tanning and meeting shifting market demands, what in the hell all that machinery in a tannery is doing all day long, why making heavy...
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Shoe Care Essentials, How Many Boots is Too Many, Brands We Want Back...It's The Shoebag!!
Before he bolts for a very important trip to the bread store, Ticho is back in the leather-smelly homestead for perhaps our most comprehensive Shoebag episode ever, in which we discuss what shoe care products are essential and which you don't really need, brands we'd love to see restored to their former glory, what to wear with Red Wings (vague hint: anything!), how many midsoles is just too many midsoles, what we'll look back at in 10 years and make fun of ourselves for, and plenty more!____...
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Bespoke Shoemaker Sebastian Tarek on West-End Outwork and Judging the World's Greatest Shoemaking Competition
When London (by way of Australia) bespoke shoemaker Sebastian Tarek began making shoes in high school, his grandmother let him in on a little secret: he had been preceded in his journey by 18 generations of family cordwainers.After years of schooling—including at the famed Cordwainers College in Hackney, London—he eventually ended up settling into a role as a bottom-maker for some of Savile Row's most prestigious bespoke firms, both in an in-house capacity and also as an piece-work outworker....
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Actor Adam Goldberg on His Lifelong Quest to Remake James Dean's Boots
Adam Goldberg has quite legitimately always been one of my favorite actors—and from Dazed & Confused, to the Fargo TV show, to A Beautiful Mind, he has always been EXCELLENTLY attired, right down to his boots. But he doesn't just play a person who cares about boots on TV and in movies! Adam is a very real-deal obsessive who's neck deep in Clinch, Zerrow's, and quite possibly too much more.In an episode that will surely open the floodgates to most-to-all of Hollywood coming on the Shoecast...