Mr Porter: Exclusive Grenson and Foot the Coacher vintage-style footwear collaboration

I really like the look of this exclusive collaboration from Mr Porter which brings together Grenson, a British company with over 130 years’ experience in traditional British shoemaking and Foot the Coacher, the flagship brand of Tokyo-based shoe designer Mr Toshinosuke Takegahara.

Made in England, designed in Japan, this is collection of vintage-style men's boots that, for me, recreates the days of the best of British footwear in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The design of these boots is based on early football boots

The Grenson factory in Northamptonshire was founded in 1866 and was the first in the world to employ the “Goodyear welt” method of construction, a technique that has become a hallmark of all well-made British shoes. It was here in Northampton that a young Mr Takegahara first studied his craft and the experience has clearly stayed with him. His footwear brand uses the Goodyear welt process as the foundation for all of its shoes, and takes classic English shoe design as one of its major inspirations.

Tim Little, owner and creative director of Grenson, explained the thinking behind the collaboration.

“What Foot the Coacher do is very much about old, antique styling. Their speciality is the vintage English look with their own take – Victorian footwear, in particular. Shoes today have become more simple than they were back then. A lot of the tiny detailing has been abandoned, and they bring a lot of that back. We were able to take their designs, and look back into our archives for old construction methods.”

The result is a collection of five boots, in two styles – one inspired by a vintage football boot, another by an Edwardian “Balmoral” boot. According to Mr Takegahara of Foot the Coacher, it’s “an opportunity to show what Britishness means to us – but from our own design perspective.”

For more information see Mr Porter.