The Singaporean bespoke shoemaker who dreams of stepping onto the world stage

CNA Lifestyle

The Singaporean bespoke shoemaker who dreams of stepping onto the world stage

In 2015, Josh Leong started offer bespoke shoe services, and he hasn't looked back since, dipping his toes in various businesses such as Palola, Seamless Bespoke and his own Josh Leong and Heirloom by Josh Leong brands.

25 May 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 10 Jul 2022 03:23AM)

For most men interested in way, owning a pair of bespoke shoes is 1 of several aspirational grails, the kind of matter you treat yourself to but when money is no object – particularly in a country like Singapore, whose humid climate pretty much turns any shoe chiffonier into a mould incubator.

Between the potential for mould, the rain and the chances of someone accidentally scuffing your shoe, an investment in bespoke shoes is something y'all can only do if you neither sweat the minor stuff nor need to worry about the expense.

For those who do fit into this category, in the past, commissioning a pair of bespoke footwear would have required a trip to Europe or Japan. And no, those cheap "custom" shoes yous had made on holiday in Hoi An are definitely not what any cocky-respecting shoe lover would consider bespoke, permit solitary worth wearing in public.

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Cap toe oxford - French last - Radica Bracklen 2

Enter Josh Leong, who has been making a name for himself ever since he started offering bespoke shoe services in 2015. Fine dress shoes are offered under the brand "Josh Leong" while "Heirloom by Josh Leong" focuses on coincidental footwear similar sneakers and driving loafers. In 2016, Josh partnered with Jeremiah Ang from The J.Myers Company to institute the brand Palola, which features women's ballet flats and loafers. And in 2017, Josh partnered with Lusso Tailors and local shoe enthusiast Winston Liang to form Seamless Bespoke, a unique "boutique and atelier" concept that produces bespoke clothing and shoes made in-house by their team of artisans.

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HI, JOSH. Do You CONSIDER YOURSELF AN Artist, A CRAFTSMAN, AN ENTREPRENEUR, OR ALL OF THESE?

I retrieve when you lot're running a small, craft-based business similar a bespoke shoemaking make, it's of import to recognise that you lot need to accept the ability to adapt and wear unlike hats when the situation calls for it. For example, when I'g designing for my sneaker collection or when I'yard designing a customer'due south bespoke dress shoes, I need to pull out my artist hat and get into designing style. Besides, when I'1000 in the process of making a pair of shoes, precision and an heart for the tiniest details are probably two of the about important aspects when information technology comes to crafting a well-made pair of shoes. In my opinion, the most difficult of the 3 roles is really the entrepreneurship role, as very ofttimes, the very cadre of a handcrafted business or product runs opposite to the primary objective of whatever business – which is to make as much money as possible. The very nature of a handcrafted business organisation is that it is very difficult to scale, and that every bit a business organisation, it's always going to be hard to juggle how profitable the business organisation tin be, versus offering customers products that are made to the highest standards in terms of materials and workmanship.

HOW DID Yous FIRST DISCOVER YOUR Honey FOR SHOES AND THEN SHOEMAKING?

Equally a teenager, I was always saving my pocket coin to go a new pair of sneakers, and my personal collection of shoes was always larger than my entire family's collection combined!

Shoemaking was really something that I stumbled into more than something that I had always wanted to pursue. It all started with a love for leather, which led me to fiddle in leather-crafting equally a hobby. When I decided to plow this hobby of mine into a career, I moved to Florence, Italy, to enrol at a trade school that taught both bag-making and shoemaking courses. Equally soon as I started learning how to make shoes, I was hooked. It was one of those life-changing moments when I realised that the shoemaking manufacture was where I wanted to exist for the rest of my career. The affair that I love about shoemaking is that it is the perfect combination of the arts, in terms of the lines and the designs, and science, how we summate sure measurements that bear on the fit and function of the shoes. Every single one of the more than 100 steps in the shoemaking process has a compounding effect on the next stride, and an accomplished shoemaker is ane who is able to execute as many of these different steps as cleanly and precisely as possible.

TELL ME More than Most YOUR Feel OF TRAINING IN ITALY. HOW LONG WAS It? WHAT WAS EACH Solar day LIKE?

The one yr that I spent in Italy making shoes was probably one of the happiest years of my life! I have the fondest memories of making shoes with my boyfriend students and apprentices, learning from my masters, visiting the suppliers and factories around Florence, sourcing for the all-time materials and components for shoemaking. A typical day equally a bespoke shoemaking amateur starts at 8am in the morning, and usually lasts until 7pm at nighttime. While the craft of shoemaking is physically very demanding, at that place is a somewhat therapeutic, calming effect that washes over me when I'1000 in the workshop. The sounds within a shoemaking workshop are what I remember and treasure the most – hammering, rasping, the audio of knives being sharpened and the audio of threads being pulled through the welts and soles as nosotros stitched each pair of shoes by mitt.

WHAT DID YOU DO PREVIOUSLY? WHAT WAS YOUR PROFESSION AND DID YOU ENJOY WHAT You lot DID?

I've been a competitive tennis player since the age of ix, so tennis has always been a huge part of my life. After I graduated from Anglo-Chinese Junior College, I started coaching my juniors in the school team as a fun way to earn a little extra pocket money. I soon realised that I enjoyed coaching, and I continued to practise it on a part-time basis throughout my university days. Upon graduating from Singapore Direction University, I worked in advert sales for a year, merely left to pursue a full-time career as a tennis motorbus, coaching both ACJC's competitive tennis team equally well as my ain private students. I did relish my time as a tennis coach, but decided that it wasn't something that I wanted to do for the remainder of my career, hence, the decision to jump into leather crafting and afterward, shoemaking.

IS SINGAPORE A TOUGH PLACE TO Be A CREATIVE?

Yes and no. If y'all're referring to the very abstract, super "out of this world", free-flowing type of creativity that you lot run across most commonly in modern fine art, then I remember Singapore is a tough place for that kind of creativity and expression. My opinion of Singaporeans is that they by and large prefer to play information technology safe and typically don't venture off the browbeaten track too ofttimes, so finding an audition that is able to appreciate very abstract expressions of creativity is tough in Singapore. Nonetheless, I think that there are many varying degrees of inventiveness and creative expression, and if you're smart and bold enough to observe your creative niche, the local market and the accompanying spending power are able to support these local ventures.

HOW DO YOU Notice YOUR CUSTOMERS?

Bespoke shoes are an ultra niche product. The vast majority of my customers are referred by existing customers or people who have heard my story and seen my work. I've been very fortunate to accept had my story picked up by numerous media channels, specially during the early days when I was commencement starting out, so that helped to accelerate the growth of my brands.

WHAT SHOULD CUSTOMERS Sympathize ABOUT BESPOKE SHOES? WHY SHOULD THEY CONSIDER THIS As OPPOSED TO OFF THE SHELF?

The showtime and almost important affair that customers need to empathize about bespoke shoes is that it is all virtually the process. The final pair of shoes is really just the end product, only the main beauty of bespoke is derived from the human relationship that is formed between the shoemaker and client. As well often, customers who are new to bespoke place too much emphasis on the finished production, instead of enjoying the process. The more a shoemaker understands the client, the better the bespoke shoes will turn out. Needless to say, i of the biggest differences between bespoke shoes versus off-the-shelf shoes is that the fit should be just as, if non fifty-fifty more important, than the final aesthetic design of the shoe. I've ever likened finding the right bespoke shoemaker similar to finding the right barber, or the right tailor. One time you observe the right shoemaker who understands what your anxiety need, that is what makes all the difference.

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Exercise YOU EVER HAVE THOSE "WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I DOING" MOMENTS?

All the time! When you're running any kind of small concern and yous've only got a small team working for yous, it'south inevitable that you volition come beyond tasks or problems that you and your team have never encountered before, and you will need to embrace the uncertainty or else it volition consume y'all. When I was starting time starting out, I used to be overwhelmed when faced with the many challenges that were all a part of running a pocket-sized business organisation. Nevertheless, as you overcome each of these obstacles, you lot add each experience to your "purse of tricks", and your confidence grows. These days, yous acquire to look that there will e'er be problems along the way, and that it's all part of the journey as an entrepreneur. I've also learnt that even though you may exist the business organization owner, yous don't ever need to know how to do everything when running the business organization - it'south more important for you to detect and manage a team that has the feel and noesis to help you to achieve your goals, and information technology's perfectly all right to sometimes have absolutely no idea what y'all're doing. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you learn to trust the team that'south around yous, instead of always micro-managing everything and everyone!

WHAT'S BEEN THE TOUGHEST Artistic Challenge YOU'VE FACED And then FAR?

The toughest creative challenge then far has definitely been designing the various collections of women'due south shoes under my women's make Palola. I think when my business partner Jeremiah and I first started designing the first-always collection of Palola shoes, we showed the designs and colours that nosotros'd selected to some of our female person friends. Their first response to the initial prototypes was that the shoes looked similar they had been designed by "two straight men" – basically implying that we had chosen colours and designed silhouettes that were nada at all similar what women would similar to wear. We took the criticism to middle, and went back to the cartoon boards and completely redesigned the entire collection, selecting leathers and colours based on the feedback from our female friends.

ARE You THE ONLY ONE IN SINGAPORE DOING WHAT Y'all ARE DOING?

I'grand definitely non the but one in Singapore starting his own shoe brands, only I'm quite sure that I'yard the just one in Singapore who makes men'south bespoke shoes in traditional paw-welted construction.

WHO IS YOUR Design OR CREATIVE HERO?

Tom Ford is a designer I really look upwardly to. Aside from the amazing clothes and shoes that he designs, I admire his work ethic, likewise equally his incredible attention to detail and his nearly OCD-like sense of perfection. He's also incredibly poised, elegant and eloquent - all traits that I adore greatly. I think if you want to excel in whatsoever blazon of creative or design role, you need to have an obsessive-type personality. You have to feel uneasy or uncomfortable when something isn't perfect. That's what drives you and motivates you lot to ever be ameliorate.

TELL ME SOMETHING About YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS I WOULD NEVER EXPECT.

I'g not a natural, gifted designer who is able to describe up something on a piece of newspaper from scratch. However, my gift is that I'yard able to identify what looks prissy and what doesn't. In other words, I would like to think that I generally have good taste when it comes to identifying and understanding why some things look nicer than others.

Whenever I start designing a new collection of shoes, I sit down and I curl through thousands upon thousands of shoes from all sorts of brands, shortlisting those that I experience look nice or have that special X-gene. I pick out the bits of the shoes that I like, and I utilise all these different elements and combine them together to grade my initial pattern paradigm. I never draw or sketch out my first prototype on a piece of newspaper - I prefer to become straight into drawing the lines and the blueprint directly on the bodily shoe last that I volition be using to make the prototype shoe. I find that the 3D form of the terminal gives me a better visual agreement of what the last production will look like, compared to a 2D drawing on a piece of paper.

WHAT'S THE DREAM?

The dream is for my brands to exist recognised on a global stage – the marketplace in Singapore is a very, very small market for a product that is equally niche as mine, and the but fashion for my businesses to really scale up is to expect across our shores at other markets. I've always wanted to leave a business or a legacy of sorts as well for my future children to inherit if they choose to.

The Singaporean bespoke shoemaker who dreams of stepping onto the world stage

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