It took me 100 Hours to Make 1920s Oxford Shoes

Hello everyone, and welcome back. This week I am finally getting to a very large part of my 1920s capsule wardrobe, because I need a pair of shoes that I can actually do a lot of walking in. I fortunately have a pair of 1919 Oxfords in my collection of antiques, they're a lovely pair of what they would call walking Oxfords, so that seems like potentially the perfect thing for me to do a reproduction of for this project. Now I can date this original pair very specifically to 1919 for a few reasons. Above all else, it is the toe shape. This incredibly elongated and extreme pointed toe is really distinct not just to 1919, but most of the references to the extremely long pointed toes of 1919 mention that it is an American style, that the French aren't doing their toes nearly as long, pointed toes are certainly in, but they're not that extreme. And by the time we reach 1921, you really don't see any elongated toes at all, and by the time we reach 1924, we're to a rounded toe. So this long style is very much a flash in the pan, not just for America, but in general when it comes to the more European styles. It's really distinct and unusual, which is of course one of the reasons why I particularly love it. This pair of shoes is also really evocative of that term from 1919 to 1920 when it comes to other stylistic choices, such as the blockier Cuban style heel. Prior to this point when I was looking at boots and walking Oxfords from 1918 and earlier, most of them still have a curvy wooden heel, something that is much finer and daintier in certain ways, so this by comparison is a pretty tailored style. Same thing goes with the Oxford style. Now Oxfords are around as of pretty early in the 19th century by terminology, I can find as of the 1840s references to Oxford shoes. So this is not a new style, and it's not even a new style for women's shoes, you find plenty of Oxfords in say the 1890s when it comes to women's styles. The thing is though, as we reach the point of about 1920, there are a lot of articles talking about how the Oxford is replacing the boot as the walking shoe of choice for women's attire. We're moving away from those higher boots where they fasten by way of buttons or by way of lacing up the leg. You see it a ton in the decades prior to 1920, but you don't see them nearly as often in the 1920s or later. But even in the 1920s, the early part, there are some boots but they tend to be more the slouchy style, like this pair of 1922 boots that I reproduced for my collection, that slouchier, less structured, more rain boot looking style. That's what comes in and sticks around for a while. There are still plenty of practical working boots that lace up, but again we're talking more fashion versus function when it comes to this situation. So the Oxford is apparently taking over as footwear of choice for walking for daily levels of activity. And it will continue to be immensely popular for this for decades to come. In fact, it kind of becomes a standardized uniform shoe, not just for the military, not just for World War II, but also for school uniforms and lots of different functional attire outfits throughout the next few decades. So the Oxford really takes over starting at this point. So this pair is poised at the pinnacle of being incredibly trendy, incredibly popular, and a lot of its elements manage to stick around for the decades to come, which is really, really amazing. Now I do have to say, in reproducing this pair of Oxfords, I am taking on a very, very large project. This contains quite a few construction methods that I have not done often or at all. And in fact, as of the point that I'm filming this, I'm not done with the shoes yet. I have about 50-ish hours into them and I have probably another 20 left to go. This is incredibly time consuming, not just because it's new to me, but just because of the amount of very detailed work and layering to assemble this pair of shoes. If you don't know much about shoemaking, why would you? There are lots of different ways to assemble shoes. You're still going to have the same basic parts. You can glue them all together, you can stitch them all together, you can add in a few extra things like a welt, which is what we're going to be doing on this pair of shoes. And there's just so many ways of doing it, some of which take a lot more time and effort than others, especially since I am doing everything by hand. And I don't have specialized machinery for this assembly like they would have in the era. In fact, the antique pair of Oxfords is definitely made in a more mass production facility by lots of specialized machines. First off, it is a welted construction, which means that when they're stitching the insole to the uppers to kind of make it one solid box of a shoe, there's also a strip of leather that is stitched around the exterior. It's really typical for men's styles of shoes today. It's typical for any style of shoe that's got a sturdier, hardier sole on it, because that's what welting allows you to do, have a much thicker, hardier sole. And that means that I'm doing the stitching twice over. I'm doing the stitching to get the welt on to deal with the beginning part of everything. And then I'm doing a second set of stitching on the exterior that goes through the welt down into the outer sole. Then we deal with the heel. This particular pair of shoes is interesting when you get really close up to the welting because it is clearly a modern style. These little ridges that you see on the welt are meant to be stitches per inch. So it's meant to be that you do one stitch for each one of those little ridges. Now that's a lot of stitches if you choose a finer gauge, like the one that you see on this pair of Oxfords. That takes a lot of time and at that fineness would require you to do it by hand. So they took a really fast and easy way out, which is to cut a little vertical channel into the welt, hide the stitches down in that, and then use the tool to go back over it so you barely see them. I'm grateful that that's the case, so I get to go a little bit faster and easier on this. But again, they probably would have had a machine that did this. I don't. I have to do it by hand. The mass manufactured portion carries over into the heel as well, where they likely would have had the heels pre-made. They're a stacked leather that is curved to the correct shape. And then they could have adjusted it slightly depending on the size that they need. That's the way that it is done today. However, I don't have the skill, knowledge, experience, machines necessary to do that. So it's actually easier for me to reverse the process and build the heel onto the shoe rather than slap the finished heel onto the shoe itself. So my process will be a little bit different. All of this is to say that the choices that were made for this original pair of shoes were made to make it easier and faster if you have the right machinery. I don't have any shoemaking machinery because it's big, bulky, and expensive. So even though I have made a lot of shoes at this point, this is all going to be relatively new to me, and I'm going to be problem-solving my way through the process to figure out how I need to adjust what's going on with that shoe to make it work for the techniques that I know and I'm comfortable with, and not having the machinery that they do. So this thing is a mammoth project that is a little bit overwhelming to me. And I feel like the important thing to take away here is the fact that I do feel like I'm not sure I can do this. That's okay. I am trying the best that I can, and I am learning my way through this, and it is going well so far. But it's okay to be overwhelmed like that. Just try. As is with many shoes in this era, the lining is made up of a lightweight leather and a little bit of cotton twill. I generally prefer to cut out most of my pattern pieces rather than use a knife, just because I'm working with such thin leathers. And that's certainly the case not only for this lining, but also for the main leather for the uppers. I chose to go with something slightly different than the original black, and I'm actually using a remodeled dark green, which clearly in some lighting doesn't really appear so much more than black, but it has a lovely sheen to it. All of the edges that are meant to be seamed or folded down, no matter how thin the leather, still need to be skived. They need to reduce as much bulk as possible. So I go around every single one of them that isn't going to be left flat, and work down just about the first quarter inch or so. That way I can fold it more cleanly and have less of a problem around some of the curves. Some of the edges, however, in this case are going to be pinked instead of folded back. This pair of oxfords has a really tiny pinking done on the edge, which was a bit difficult to find any sort of tool that did work this small. And all of the edges that are pinked also have broguing done. So there are going to be two lines of stitching about a quarter inch apart, and between those two lines of stitching, there will be a series of repeated punched holes. I am making sure to mark everything out as precisely as I possibly can. I'm working with a pair of dividers, so that way the stitch lines will be evenly placed. I'll use the same dividers when I'm going to measure out each one of the spacings of the holes, because though there are such things as broguing tools, the holes that I need to punch for replicating the original are incredibly tiny, and finding a broguing tool is hard enough as it is, they don't seem to come this small. So I have to go around and individually punch, which is not a bad idea since all of these curves are fairly complex as well, and a broguing tool that had a line of four or five of the same hole repeated might not actually work well around those curves. Another interesting addition I had to make here with the broguing is the fact that some of it's going to be able to be seen through to the lining, which is not the same color as the rest of the leather, so some sort of backing has to be added. In this case, I chose to go with a cotton rather than thinning out a leather to match. Then I'm able to start actually going through the assembly. I've chosen this time around, rather than using tape, to use the cement that I'd use for the vast majority of my shoe construction, and it made my life a lot simpler. It's still a bit of a struggle since I don't have the machinery that's necessary for making shoe uppers, and I just have a regular sewing machine. It does well enough, but it's far from perfect when it comes to dealing with the curves and the rather three-dimensional shapes. But despite that, I'm still ready to finish off all those edges, fold it back like I mentioned earlier, punching the last few little holes, and adding a few extra pieces. This is where the sewing becomes a little bit complicated. Not all of the pieces are easy to get access to. Everything's pretty flat and simple until I add that back seam, and then I need to add the little back strap to it as well, and, well, this is where my sewing machine starts to fight back, not only in the mass that I'm making it through, but also dealing with the curves and the complexities. The lining has a fair bit of bulk as well. It actually has a little piece in the back that is suede-side out, so it hopefully holds the heel in just a little bit better. In the front, before I'm able to assemble the entirety of the lining, I need to add the eyelets, which are not visible to the exterior. There's actually a bunch of smaller holes on the exterior for some reason, so these were the smallest eyelets I could find. And once the lining is stitched together and complete, then I can actually stitch around the top of the Oxford, connecting all the pieces together. The edges do need to be trimmed back, it's just so much easier to stitch them this way and then get a really precise cut than hope that they line up exactly the other way. Then it's time to figure out all of the other pieces. In fact, though that upper seems incredibly complex, the rest of the shoe is just as complex and requires just as many different pieces. I am taking a sort of map of the base of my last, so that way the insole can be cut out very precisely. Sometimes I do it this way, sometimes I do it on the last, but this was the easier method for this particular option I found, especially since my last is quite built up. Then I need to do all of the detail work before I can start stitching my way through the insole, because there is so much to be done. In order to stitch through the insole, we have to create what's called a holdfast, which is a little strip of leather that I'm going to be stitching through. And I need to make it easier to enter and exit this strip of leather. Rather than shortening down the entire sole in order to make this one strip sit proud, I'm just going to reduce the exterior by way of an angle, or in this case, a straight edge, and cut in, and then I will create another vertical channel that allows me to start the awl into. I do have a curved awl, so that makes it a little bit easier, but this is the best way to get a really clean line exterior and interior with as little bulk as possible. Every single spot that I just marked with my dividers needs a hole opened up with the awl blade. That is, not surprisingly, quite a tedious bit of work, but we're not done yet, because not only do I have the upper and the insole to be stitched together, in this case, I'm also doing a welt, and that welt needs to be prepared. So I'm using the same leather as my sole leather, so that way it matches and stains appropriately, and that means that I need to pare it down a lot. It is way, way too thick for a welt. So I'm going through, skiving it down thickness-wise overall, skiving down one of the edges so that it's angled and won't have as much bulk where the stitches come through, creating a channel for the stitches so they don't sit proud. There's just so much work that has to be done, even for this tiny little piece of leather. Then it's back to preparing some of the last few bits for the uppers. They need reinforcement in the heel and in the toe. I'm using a really lightweight, really stiff leather for this. It softens up a fair bit when it's wet, but it's nearly rawhide when it's dry. So this will sit in the back and cup the heel, and then the toe will be taken care of in a few steps when the lasting is started. So that's the next step. The insole is added to the last, and the upper is started as well. I went ahead and put a temporary shoe tie around the top so that way it holds its shape correctly, but we'll have better shoelaces at the end. One of the most important things when you're lasting a shoe is to make sure that the back and the front, the sides, all end up evenly. You're not skewing it around the last. Which is especially important for this shoe because there is a little bit of broguing over the toe, and it'll be really obvious if it's even just a quarter of an inch off. So I'm constantly going back and double-checking, making sure that everything is lined up as precisely as I possibly can, making sure that everything is pulled snugly but not so tight that I damage the uppers. Because especially with a leather this thin, that is a possibility. But the process of lasting is just going back and forth and back and forth, adding more and more tacks to make sure that everything pulls smoothly and holds into place, and we have no wrinkles. Or at least as few as possible. Some of them will hide underneath and inside of the shoe, but we definitely don't want any visible wrinkles on the exterior. And it's for that reason that I'm spending some time with cementing some of the layers down as well. Though I'm going to be stitching through all of these, and they don't need the cement in order to hold them into place. It does allow me to make sure that every single little wrinkle is smoothed out, that I am creating as little bulk as possible, everything can be cut down, trimmed down, and made sure to be as flat as possible, so that way I don't end up with a lumpy shoe in the end. And these parts will be actually really impossible to access once I have stitched the welt on. So it's pretty important for me to take care of doing each layer appropriately while I can still get into it. And that includes a little toe reinforcement. The originals have an extremely stiff toe, so I know that there is a hardy toe reinforcement in that area. So I'm doing the same thing, working it down to be as flat as possible at the sole region, but leaving the bulk of it above, so that way it can provide the resistance that is needed for such an elongated, pointed toe. For this shoe, I'm also adding a new step for me, which is using a shoe cover made out of plastic to protect the shoe uppers as I am stitching and constructing, dyeing them around the sole edges, all the different steps. So this is just a really great way to make sure that I'm less likely to nick anything with a knife, stain anything, get the wax on anything, because the threads that I'm using to stitch everything together are done with a black wax. You can use lighter colors, you can use just straight beeswax, it's not quite as ideal, but a shoemaker's wax has tar and pitch, rosin and beeswax, and it's not only incredibly sticky, but it is very likely to stain and abrade. My hands by the end of making threads or by the end of stitching are usually, well, covered in the wax. It thankfully has a nice smoky smell to it, so it's not a problem, but it does take a fair bit of effort to get off of my hands, so understandably it takes a lot of effort to get off of the leather of the shoes as well if it's rubbing up against the uppers. One of the reasons that I'm able to use black wax on this is because it's a darker color, a lot of this is going to be hidden. It is a stronger wax than the light colored wax, which has a lot more beeswax and a lot less of the other stuff, so I will always prefer to use this if I can, as long as I'm not doing a lighter colored shoe. There are a lot of stitches to be done on this particular pair of shoes, and each one of those has to be a stitch, not just through the insole, but through each layer of the uppers and through the welt as well. This was a bit of an endeavor in some places, you want to make sure everything's being kept straight, the welt is not wobbling back and forth, each one of the exit holes needs to be lined up, and this, honestly, is one of the longest parts of the entire process. One of the most exhausting. This ends up being pretty much most of a day for me to get around one shoe, and it's not something I can do a little bit and set it aside, because in order to make it through the stitches really well, the insole needs to be fairly damp. Once it starts to dry, it starts to harden, and it won't want to give as easily. So, living in the desert, I can't really do this overnight. And that means that I have to get this done starting early in the morning, and hopefully finishing before dinner, making sure that everything is taken care of before the end of the day. I do also prefer to get in there immediately after and trim away all the excess, make sure it all gets hammered down so it's as flat as possible, again something that's easier done when it's not completely dry. Leather is fairly moldable, but it becomes less so the drier it is. Once the welt is stitched on, though, I can go around and start trimming it to shape. I'm not getting it perfectly shaped just yet, it's pretty hard to trim such a thin piece of leather exactly, but before I go and cut out the outer sole, I want to make sure I'm as close as is comfortable for me. I'm also going to go and fill in the space that is left by the thickness of all of these seam allowances. So there's no way I can get these completely flat, therefore there's going to be a little bit of a gap between the insole and the outsole, and it makes perfect sense to fill it with something that is going to add cushion to the foot, prevent the leather from squeaking together, because if you have leather against leather, they will eventually start to squeak, and this middle can be filled by lots of different things, but cork sheeting is one of the easiest things to acquire, and to cut to shape and fill in. So that's what I tend to use in most of my more modern shoes, I actually use wool broadcloth in my older styles. The outsole is then ready to be prepared, because I have the general shape of what I need. This is going to have a channel stitched into it through the welt, but I need to hide those stitches. It's not only better in terms of longevity of the shoe, I'm not going to be wearing through into those stitches as immediately, I have a fair bit of sole leather to wear into first, and in general, it's just a little bit cleaner of a look on the bottom. So I started off by cutting a horizontal channel in, and now I'm going to pare down the sole as much as I want. Namely, I don't want as thick of a sole as this particular style comes. It's really hard to get very thin sole leather, usually it comes thicker, so then you can work it down to whatever thickness you want. This is the lightest weight that I can get, but it is far above and beyond what I need for most of the shoes that I am making. And of course, can't make it through an entire couple weeks of shoemaking without a little bit of demand for attention. Back to work, however, and I'm ready to add the insole, cementing it down so that way I don't need to nail it down and put holes in the bottom. So this part of the process means that everything connects up well, and I don't have to worry about it shifting and moving while I'm doing all the stitching. I can then go and trim back the sole just a little bit, I gave myself some extra space just because it needs to curve over the shape of the last, and it's hard to get that precise. But once that's done and taken care of, it's time to cut the vertical channel where I'm going to be putting my stitches, because again, we're trying to bury those as deep in that sole as we can without going so deep that we're likely to just rip through it. Same thing goes with the top, like I mentioned with the antique earlier, these stitches don't sit proud, they don't sit on top, they're not going to be visible, they get hidden in a channel, so that way you don't know how big they are. The thing is, though, they still made really tiny stitches, so it's not like I'm taking big half-inch stitches for any of this, they're honestly less than a quarter of an inch between each one of the stitches. And that's pretty small, frankly, it could be a visible welt on most modern shoes and would still be a pretty decent number of stitches per inch, so I don't know why they insisted on hiding it, but again, that takes the pressure off of me, because I don't have to worry about these stitches being perfectly even, I don't have to worry about every single one of them sitting just right, and then I can just get on with the work as quickly as possible, because just like with the insole, I need to get around this outsole before it dries out. Yes, I can wet things back down, but it's really hard to actually get deep into the leather and wet it down without letting it soak in my sink for a few hours. Once the stitching is done, though, I can keep trimming back those edges to exactly where they need to be, now everything is holding together really nicely, and I can cement the little flap back as well. I want to trim first just because that thing's a pretty thin piece and a little bit ornery, so I'm trimming back the upper edges, then cementing down the little flap, and then I'll be cutting that to shape as well. Then it's time to start on the heel, which is the part that I honestly, I'm not gonna say I dread the most, but was probably the most daunted by. Most of the time, stacked heels are only two or three layers, I've done that before, however this heel is a few inches high and is entirely made of stacked leather. Today you would have a professional heel maker make these up pre-done, they would usually come with a metal rod in the middle to prevent them from shifting and changing as you put pressure on them. I do not have this luxury in either way, so I'm building up these heels from the base of the shoe, gradually shaping it as I go. And in order to make sure that they don't shift and move, I am using a lot of wooden pegs. You can also use shoenails here, but I am much more familiar with wooden pegs as a shoemaking method, it's something that was used a lot historically, not just for heels, but in fact in the early 19th century, they made machines that would work through the entire sole and heel of usually men's heavier shoes with wooden pegs. That was the entire production process, just that. So a wooden peg can hold up to a lot of tension back and forth, and I'm just using an alternating pattern to make sure that I am giving myself as much strength and stability as I possibly can while building up these heels, because this is a pair of walking oxfords, and I'm going to be doing a lot of walking on them. So yeah, that heel is just going to take a lot of layers, a lot of carving, gradually shaping it down. As I add a couple layers here and there, I can start to see the shape, not carving it down too much to begin with, with the exception of the curve that you see on top. This is something that is carrying over from the curve from the last, which is curve on the insole and curve on the sole, and I need to flatten this out. So the first one gets cut down to pretty much a horseshoe shape in order to even things out and get it as flat as possible. The next few layers will help me flatten it just a little bit more, a little bit more, but we'll be within about a sixteenth of an inch in terms of the flatness for this. And at that point, I can put in all the pegs for that layer and start working my way up layer by layer. In fact, you're going to see me end up putting eleven layers on this shoe. I'm not going to show you each individual layer. That was about two days of work again right there, but there's a lot of layers. The final layer actually has three nails added rather than wooden pegs. This makes it easier to remove because this is what's going to take all of the wear and tear, and so this piece will actually be considered replaceable with time. So I need it to be pretty easily removable. Once that's in place, it's time to start smoothing everything out. It doesn't matter how nice of an edge I can get with cutting it with a knife, it's not going to be exactly perfect, especially around that curved heel. So I'm going to go around all of the edges and make sure that everything is as smooth as possible, going through gradually finer and finer grit sandpapers, glassing, rasping, whatever I need to do to get the surface as finished as possible. This does mean I'm going to make it really fuzzy and then gradually work the fuzz away so it does look worse before it looks better. I'm also going to be working on the sole since I want a suede sole for the front. That seems to be how the originals look. It doesn't really make a huge difference in terms of traction, in my opinion. It's going to wear down pretty quickly to begin with. It just looks nicer for a little bit longer. Before I'm able to start doing the official finishing, I also want to add a little bit of gum tragicanth, burnish it down. This gets things to a shiny level of finish, which is how I know that everything is really smooth. I don't have any lumps or bumps that are going to show up later in the process. If I start to see any, this is the point where I will go back in with the sandpaper or rasp and work it back down again. Because the next step is dealing with all of the heated tools. This is the very new part for me. I have never worked with heated tools like this, or an alcohol burner lamp, outside of science class. So I had to purchase a lot of new pieces for this and try them out. You'll see them again in just a minute, but they all get their imprints in before I start to blacken and wax everything down. So I'm going to be adding a black wax, but underneath of that, it's better if I have a really good black dye. Black dye is able to get into the tiny little corners that I won't be able to get that black wax, but the dye won't make it nearly as shiny. So each one of them has their own job to do. So I've gone through, dyed everything, adding a very rough layer of wax. It melts really quickly and easily. It's going to go on really rough, but then that's where those heated tools come back in. And I'm able to go around, create the indentations that would normally be the stitches per inch for the ridges around the edges. Go around the edges of the exterior of the sole and work that down. Make sure that that is glassed and smooth. These tools melt the wax just enough that it smooths out as you go and cools down really quickly and solidifies, so you get a very shiny finish to the edge of it. It's a little bit more difficult with the heel, however. This is a very complex curve situation, and I am trying to get the wax as smooth as possible, but it won't be perfect until I go back through the dry cloth and I burnish the edges again. And by burnishing the edges, I heat the wax up just a little bit more, so that way I can smooth it out, but it's not nearly as much as the tools, you know, metal heated over in open flame. So these last few little marks are created around the top of the heel. Burnish that out so everything above it is nice and shiny, and you can see a beautiful finish on this. Then it's time to unlast the shoe. First step, take off the plastic cover, so that way I can get into everything that I need to. Then I am ready to take off the ties and pull out the last. The final step, once the last is pulled, is a little bit of leather on top of the insole. It doesn't go all the way down in, but it covers up any residual nails or pegs that might have popped through the top. They're not sticking up through it that much, but they might be a little rough on, say, a fine pair of stockings. So we want to make sure everything is smooth and ready to go. Adding in my antique shoelaces, and we're all done.