Shoemaker · Tokyo

Hiro Yanagimachi

Hiro Yanagimachi is a small Tokyo workshop making custom shoes by hand, known for carefully designed shoe forms that follow the structure of the foot.

Hiro Yanagimachi makes bespoke shoes in Tokyo, hand-welted, with a strong emphasis on last design and on the relationship between the shoe's shape and the foot's structure. The workshop is small and takes a limited number of commissions.

BespokeMade-to-measure

An illustration of a welted shoe of the kind the house makes. Not a photograph of the house's own work.

House style — shoulder: not documented

Chest — extensive handwork

Fittings 2–3 40–104 weeks

From $5,500 lowest documented, converted

Last first

Yanagimachi's work is notable for how much attention goes into the last before any leather is cut: the shape is treated as the design problem rather than the pattern or the finish.

The finished shoes are clean and quiet: less obviously virtuosic than some Japanese work, and admired within the trade for exactly that.

Services

Bespoke on a carved last, and a made-to-order service on the workshop's existing lasts at a lower price. Both are hand-welted and made in the Tokyo workshop.

Output is small and the waiting list reflects it. The workshop travels occasionally but is principally accessed in Tokyo.

Approach

The workshop treats the last as the design problem: how the shoe holds the heel, releases at the joint and supports the arch is worked out before any decision about pattern or finish. The results are deliberately quiet: clean lines, restrained decoration, nothing that announces the effort.

Within the Tokyo scene this is a distinct position. Much Japanese bespoke shoemaking competes on visible virtuosity; this house competes on the part nobody photographs.

Hand welted

holdfast carved from the insole

holdfast is part of the insole

Resoleable: repeatedly

Goodyear welted

canvas rib glued to the insole

gemming is glued on: the part that fails

Resoleable: several times

Blake

one seam through everything

the seam passes into the shoe

Resoleable: with a Blake machine

Cemented

sole glued to the upper

adhesive only

Resoleable: generally not

upper insole welt outsole

How a sole is attached, and whether it can be replaced The welt in the two left-hand constructions carries the sole stitching, so the sole comes off without disturbing the upper. Hand welting cuts its ridge from the insole itself; Goodyear glues a canvas rib on, and that rib is the part that eventually fails. Diagram drawn for Il Sartoriale.

The record

City

Tokyo

Country

Japan

Service levels

Bespoke · Made-to-measure

Shoulder