If you’ve been wearing handmade leather shoes, you’ve been wearing a long-standing tradition. Describing the stages of footwear made using traditional craft techniques is like telling a lovely tale with a moral to teach us the values of beauty and quality.
Behind every unrepeatable gesture dedicated to the finished shoe are the personal stories of the men and women who have made leather crafts and decoration their life’s work. Right from the very start, handmade shoes are unique and exclusive accessories which come with the inestimable wealth of know-how from generations of artisans and the full value of Italian-made goods as the mark of refined production.
The story of an Italian handmade shoe begins with the choice of materials. Good leathers, rubbers and fabrics are the basic ingredients of a great product.
Cutting the leather is like the first draft that follows a precise design and lays the ground for future beauty. Like a map, the binding marks out the path taken by needle and thread. Thus prepared the upper moves on to skiving and folding where cuts in the leather are joined together and the shoe begins to take shape. Only the sensitive hand of a craftsman is capable of dealing with imperfections when finishing the assembled upper.
The finished upper is then attached using the last and stitched. The channel and the bottom are prepared, dyed and covered in adhesive for a perfect hold, while the leather of the future shoe is roughed down by hand.
The heel and upper are polished to give shine and elegance to every shoe.
Then, just like the craftsman, the hand-crafted shoe has time to rest. During its time on the last, the shoe takes its final shape, boot legs are given a final stretch and all the products are prepared for quality control.
Only the finest handmade shoes get to the end of the process and are given the Fabi Shoes mark, a guarantee of the class and quality of Italian shoe-making excellence.
