Sandals built to last
Custom handmade pairs, hallmarks of quality, vintage search terms, styles for people who don't like showing their feet & more
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The first shoe ever made? A sandal. Jesus wore them. And, yet, over the centuries, finding well-made pairs you can actually walk in has only gotten harder??
This year, dismayed by the volume of expensive, low-quality pairs out there, I (Erin) decided to ask an expert to help me understand how to tell a top-notch sandal from one that just looks good in a picture.
Enter Kat Henning, who put in time creating shoes for A Détacher, No. 6 & Rachel Comey (including several pairs I personally owned) before becoming senior footwear designer at Tory Burch. She knows craftspeople, she knows factories, and she knows what feels nice on the foot.
Today I’m sharing her tips on how to identify well-made shoes generally, which sandals she thinks are actually built to last, and the 4 lines she thinks are making the best shoes right now.
I, like a lot of Spy Nation I imagine, have a tendency to fall in love with “fashion” shoes, but after talking with Kat I started to wonder if we shouldn’t be narrowing our focus to shoes strictly made by shoe brands — people who have built up expertise in all matters of the feet. Those are the sorts of lines I’m emphasizing below.
We’ve also got:
Bespoke sandals custom-made to your specifications
DIY (!) sandal kits
Sandals for people who don’t like showing their feet
Updates on Classic Sandal Archetypes from indie lines, i.e. If you like Dr. Scholls, try…
One of the best sandalmakers also makes under-the-radar flats that are unisex, eternally popping, and not too delicate — probably the most luxurious shoes I’ve ever owned!
Vintage search terms
Let’s get to it —
“Everyone used to have two pairs of shoes custom made for them,” Kat told me. Everything is still made by hand on some level — machines need humans to guide them in the factories. But when looking at shoes, Kat said, “the more you see someone’s hand in it, the higher-quality it will be.”
Here’s what Kat says are the key marks of quality when buying shoes: