What is the invisible stitching method called on these shoes?

[lullemans72]

Hi guys,

A little while ago, I bought a new pair of shoes which you can see in the photos below. The thing I noticed about these shoes is they didn't seem to have any visible stitching around the welt/out sole except for a very thin line.

I'm familiar with closed channel stitching which usually refers to invisible stitching around the bottom of the sole, but is this basically the same concept for these shoes, just with invisible stitching around the welt instead? If so, is it also referred to as just closed channel stitching? I couldn't find anything about it online.

FWIW, I bought these shoes for around 40.000 JPY (roughly 380 USD), and it's the most I've dropped for dress shoes so far, so my guess is it's some kind of premium stitching method given the price tag. I own both blake stitched and good year welted shoes with visible stitching, but I hadn't yet seen a stitching method like this one.

 

[Daniel Hakimi]

The easiest way to determine the stitching method would be to ask the maker.

You can't just assume a random shoe is well-made or worth its price. People make bonwelted shoes and sell them for more than $400, believe me. If you spend time here, you know the names of a hundred brands that are really worth that kind of money. So...

 

[lullemans72]

The easiest way to determine the stitching method would be to ask the maker.

You can't just assume a random shoe is well-made or worth its price. People make bonwelted shoes and sell them for more than $400, believe me. If you spend time here, you know the names of a hundred brands that are really worth that kind of money. So...

Thanks for the reply. Contacting the maker would have been my last resort. On their website all it says is it's a good year welt. But to go back to my original question, do you recognize the stitching method in the first photo?

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Not all Goodyear welted shoes have a visible 360 welt. I know Allen Edmonds does this and some people prefer that hefty look. On the other hand, sometimes you want a bit more of a refined profile.

As for the name of this particular method, I don’t know.

 

[Daniel Hakimi]

Thanks for the reply. Contacting the maker would have been my last resort. On their website all it says is it's a good year welt. But to go back to my original question, do you recognize the stitching method in the first photo?

It's hard to eyeball a stitching method. One thing you can try to do in general is match up the stitching on the top and bottom. If it's more densely stitched on one side than the other, that's a sign that the stitching is just there for show, which is usually a sign that it's cemented / "bonwelted."

That said, sometimes blake stitches use a fake welt too, just because the style is common. Hand welts and stormwelts are hard to tell from machined goodyear welts from the outside, at least as far as my eye can recognize. It's not norvegese or anything distinctive like that.

It doesn't look like it was hand-stitched to me. If they say it was goodyear welted, I can believe that. But the toe doesn't look great in the front, I'm sure Carmina would have made a neater shoe than that.

 

[Leventis]

Hy lullemans72!

Is it a pair of loafers?
I have only seen this ”invisible” stiching in loafers!
For exampel the ”Sydney” loafer by Crockett and Jones and the ”Allenby” loafer by Herring is made like this

 

[lullemans72]

It's hard to eyeball a stitching method. One thing you can try to do in general is match up the stitching on the top and bottom. If it's more densely stitched on one side than the other, that's a sign that the stitching is just there for show, which is usually a sign that it's cemented / "bonwelted."

That said, sometimes blake stitches use a fake welt too, just because the style is common. Hand welts and stormwelts are hard to tell from machined goodyear welts from the outside, at least as far as my eye can recognize. It's not norvegese or anything distinctive like that.

It doesn't look like it was hand-stitched to me. If they say it was goodyear welted, I can believe that. But the toe doesn't look great in the front, I'm sure Carmina would have made a neater shoe than that.

Hey Daniel, and very sorry for the tardy reply.

I agree that it isn't always easy to tell the actual stitching just by looking at the shoe from the outside. As for these shoes, the leather certainly looks and feels high quality, and so does the construction, as well as the comfort when I'm wearing them. They are on par with other good year welted shoes I own from Japanese brands. In fact, I might even go as far as saying that the leather on these shoes feels sturdiest of them all.

Hy lullemans72!

Is it a pair of loafers?
I have only seen this ”invisible” stiching in loafers!
For exampel the ”Sydney” loafer by Crockett and Jones and the ”Allenby” loafer by Herring is made like this

No, these are not loafers, they're just brogues.