Italy is famous for its shoes. I have quite a collection myself. On my last trip to Italy I went with Margie from Margie in Italy to visit Italian Shoemakers at their factory near Lucca.
Our lovely guide, Louisa, gave us a guided tour through their showroom and factory where their shoes are designed and the samples made by hand.
It was great to see the design process and I loved the room full of trims for the shoes. I would love to get my hands on some of the gorgeous bits and pieces.
We met the lovely team putting the samples together.
Louisa then took us to a nearby factory where trims are made. It is quite amazing to watch these things being pushed out of machines.
The third factory we went to assembled the various parts into the finished shoe. Everyone had a particular job to do and it was interesting to see the shoes finally come together.
Making a pair of shoes is an extraordinarily complicated process. Components come from all over and dozens of people are involved to produce a shoe. I will now appreciate mine even more.
Shoes head off from these factories to North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and South America. They appear under several different labels.
Thank you to Italian Shoemakers for a very interesting day.