Are nailed heel a sign of shoe quality (when shopping online) ?

[fredrik80]

This might be a stupid question but when shopping online (for example at yoox), it's hard to get a feel of many of the unknown shoe brands and their construction, sometimes you can get a extra view of the bottom of the sole as reference. Based on only that information - would a shoe with a proper nailed heel be an indication that it's atleast not cemented ?
Or do some brands actually bother to nail the heel and cement the rest? From my own experience most cemented shoes come with a plain non-nailed heel, probably glued i guess ?

 

[HalfCanvas]

I don't think so, but I could be wrong -- at the very least, it won't be a sign whether the sole is welted as opposed to blake stitched. Not that there's anything wrong with a well done blake sole, but there are a lot of really crappily made shoes that use blake stitch (bad leather, bad last design). In terms of a welted shoe, I can't think of anything worse than Allen Edmonds.

 

[Manton]

Some brands do think that a double row of nails at the heel give the shoe a more "artisinal" look, but be warned. Those nails are A LOT less durable than a rubber wedge and will wear down fast. All of the bespoke shoe makers I have seen and used put a rubber wedge at the rear of the heel, and no one would accuse them of doing so to cut a quality corner.

 

[Roger]

I'm not sure whether you are referring to heels with only nails and no rubber dovetail or halfmoon--just a fully leather top lift--or to heels with the rubber insert, but nails in addition. Manton's reply would seem to assume the first of these possibilities. Such heels are rare in my experience, and the nails are not really there, I believe, to take the place of a hard-rubber dovetail, but merely for decoration. Most heels have the hard-rubber dovetail or halfmoon and, many shoes (including most of the high-end ones) also have a display of nails. As far as I can tell, with very, very few shoes having nails in the heels are those nails what actually attach the heel to the rest of the shoe. With most shoes showing nails in the heels, these nails extend barely past the top lift (the layer of heel that touches the ground--maybe 3/16" thick) and are there, not for their function, but for show.

Edit: To answer your original question about the relationship between shoe quality and the existence of nails in heels, I'd have to conclude that there's next to no such relationship. You can find the very best-quality shoes with and without heel nails (my John Lobb Prestige line Westminsters, for example, have no nails, but many very high-end shoes do) and much lower-quality shoes with and without nails (my Allen-Edmonds shoes, with their full-rubber top lifts have no nails, but my Ballys, with the halfmoon rubber insert do have them).

 

[Shoe-nut]

I have owned a number of shoes with nails in the heels with only leather and no rubber wedge. These are quite dangerous to walk around in especially on waxed floors. Some Florsheims I bought many years ago were so bad that I finally had to take them in for a leather to rubber heel change out.