If you love shoes (you do), enjoy appreciating the craftsmanship that goes into making a beautiful pair (you should), and have a few minutes free (don’t lie), then boy do I have a video for you.
Based on the devastatingly picturesque Spanish island of Mallorca, Carmina has hand-crafted a stunning range of oxfords, loafers, derbies, boots, and more since 1997—although the founding Albaladejo family’s history of shoemaking on the isle extends back to the 1860s, slightly before Rafa Nadal decided he would live there too. They consistently produce one of the best values in high-end footwear, and their looks are never anything short of alluring.
In below video that Carmina produced, a pair of brogue oxfords emerge from various cuts of leather, which undergoes various pinking, stitching, glueing, brogueing, and stamping. For reasons I know not why, I got particularly tickled by the eyelet punching, followed by the insertion of the blind eyelets—it’s just oddly satisfying.
Obviously the process is a captivating one, but hopefully the main takeaway for many will be a further admiration for craftsmanship, care, and time that must be invested to make a high-quality piece of footwear. Great shoes aren’t cheap. But videos like this that display just how much incredibly skilled labor is required to create them makes one wonder how they—and especially Carminas—aren’t 5x more expensive.