The Stitchdown Shoecast

• Custom Cowboy Bootmaker Jake Houston on Preserving Knowledge, León Mexico, and Zebra Races

  About a half hour from Reno, there’s a place called Virginia City Nevada, where everything feels like it’s 1859 and the US’s largest silver deposit was just discovered. The bars say saloon and look the part. The cemetery is definitely haunted. And of course there’s a custom hatmaker—who shares a space in one of Virgnia City’s oldest surviving buildings with bespoke cowboy bootmaker Jake Houston. Jake Houston wasn’t the first person to fall victim to the wonderful folly of “the boots I want are too expensive, so I’ll just figure out how to make them.” One Lisa Sorrell DVD set, a few rodeos, and over a decade later, Jake has put together an impressively well-rounded business in Virginia City, making fully custom cowboy boots, while also finding vintage pairs to sell in the shop alongside his more affordable Houston Boot Company “shelf” boots made in Leon Mexico. Jake and I had a fantastic chat about his bootmaking journey, the time he glued the lasts into a customers’ pair, the half-decade path to get those shelf boots manufactured, his insistence on sharing his bootmaking knowledge—for free—and why people sometimes get really, really upset when you tell them what bespoke cowboy boots cost.Here’s Jake Houston, on the Shoecast. https://www.houstonbootcompany.com/https://www.instagram.com/houstonbootco/ Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membershiphttps://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/Check out our site!https://www.stitchdown.com/2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/

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• Seiji McCarthy is Making Some of the World's Greatest American Bespoke Shoes—In Japan

  Tokyo-based, half-American/half-Japanese Seiji McCarthy discusses his uniquely late path into shoemaking, the development of his vintage-Americana-inspired bespoke line, why he feels more American in Japan, and why it’s sometimes better if your bespoke shoemaker doesn't make your shoes entirely themselves.https://www.seijimccarthy.com/  Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membershiphttps://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/Check out our site!https://www.stitchdown.com/2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/

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• Is Turriff Functional Footwear Making the Best-Quality Barefoot Shoe on the Market?

  This week we've got a chat with Andrew Turriff, a Canadian shoemaker who studied at Cordwainer’s Footwear Design program in London, worked for some big sneaker brands, and did pattern work for fellow Canadians Viberg and time in the orthopedic world before deciding to make a zero-drop, anatomical, barefoot shoe with of top-end materials—and also make it resolable, which it’s otherwise quite tough to find. Turriff Functional Footwear's launch model recently became available and I’ve been wearing and loving the shoes for over a month now. Are my feet stronger? I have no idea. Am I a barefoot shoe zealot now? Nope! But I legitimately love the shoes Andrew’s created. Our chat that gets deep into the science behind barefoot shoes, the technical construction and design aspects of Turriff Footwear, and the shoemaking journey that provided the building blocks for what’s certainly been one of the more interesting pieces of quality footwear I’ve worn in a while. https://www.turriffshoes.com/ Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membershiphttps://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/Check out our site!https://www.stitchdown.com/2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/

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• How Tariffs Are Already Impacting the Footwear Industry, with FDRA CEO Matt Priest

  Matt Priest, President and CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, came on the Shoecast the morning after 104% tariffs on Chinese goods into the US hit in a rapidly-moving-target trade war with the United States and just about every other country. What ARE tariffs? How might tariffs and general uncertainty impact massive shoe brands? Smaller ones? Made-in-USA footwear? Retail prices? What's kinds of supply chain breakdowns have already happened and what might be next? How does the lobbying work that FDRA does function and benefit the footwear industry? And why is everyone suddenly really, really mad at Matt?  Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membershiphttps://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/Check out our site!https://www.stitchdown.com/2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/

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• All the Shoes & Boots Derek Guy Loves—and a Few He Really Doesn't—From Bespoke to Workboots

  Derek’s an OG forum junkie turned menswear writer for Put This On, mass publications like The New York Times, and his own always-excellent blog Die Workwear!.In the last few years, Derek has become, to many, Menswear Guy on Twitter, where his sharp cultural insights on style and complete lack of brevity break every rule of the platform in such a wonderfully potent manner (…and sometimes get him screamed at online, believe it or not).I’ve been a huge fan of Derek’s for years, so getting some time with him to just talk about the shoes and boots we dig, from bespoke to workboots, was—putting it quite lightly—an honor.Links to every brand/style we discuss can be found here: https://www.stitchdown.com/stitchdown-shoecast/derek-guy-recommends-shoes-boots/Put This On https://putthison.com/author/derek/Die Workwear https://dieworkwear.com/Derek's Twitter: https://x.com/dieworkwear Support the Shoecast, get full bonus episode access, and join the most interesting shoe-and-boot-loving community on the internet with a Stitchdown Premium membershiphttps://www.stitchdown.com/join-stitchdown-premium/Check out our site!https://www.stitchdown.com/2025 dates and location for Stitchdown's Boot Camp 3—the world's fair of shoes and boots and leather and more—coming soon.https://www.stitchdownbootcamp.com/

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