Leather shoes, made to order, that fit like a glove, and look like a dream. That is a rare luxury in a market dominated by e-commerce, where even designer brands are churning out collections by the season. For the true shoe connoisseur, only a customised product, can fashion a sartorial statement. So following slow food and slow fashion, now there\u2019s a focus on slow manufacturing. At Bridlen, a shoemaking enterprise in Chennai that started in 1986, making Goodyear welted shoes the old-school way is a rich legacy that has continued into the 21st Century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Started by the late\u00a0K Mohamed Hasan, who began his career in shoemaking with solely creating\u00a0uppers , he then turned his eye to create not just custom shoes, but footwear that would please, whom he considered the most discerning customers \u2014 the Japanese. As a first-generation shoemaker with clients in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, he found a friend in Jose Maria Watanabe, a Japanese shoemaker with four decades of experience in the business. What started as a unique friendship, then turned into a partnership that\u00a0coalesced\u00a0 the best of Japanese design and Indian craftsmanship.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the untimely demise of its founder in 2019, Bridlen is now managed by his son, Mohamed Affan Kolandaiveedu. Affan explains why their Goodyear welt design is a cut above the standard, \u201c We don\u2019t attach a cotton rib to the insole. We take a channel on a much thicker insole and stitch the welt to that. This is what separates us from most other brands at our price point or even a few brackets above. A search on the authorities of the classic shoe world from Simon Crompton at Permanent Style or Jesper of shoegazing.com have singled out this feature as a point of strength, something that you don\u2019t normally find on factory made shoes,\u201d explains Affan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story of Bridlen is fashioned by an Indian team guided by Watanabe. A Goodyear welted shoemaker based in Spain, he worked with a European partner, and was looking for a manufacturing capacity closer to Japan, when he heard about a small factory in India and came to visit. \u201cWatanabe and Hasan really hit it off with their philosophy for quality, ethics in business and demeanour that they decided to do something together even though the original plan to move the Spanish production to India did not work,\u201d states Affan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watanabe looked to pass on his skills, to Indian\u00a0craftsmen who were serious\u00a0about preserving\u00a0the trade. \u201cMy project with Affan Shoes was the production of a finished shoe, something they had never experienced before, and at the same time it was a quality standard that was accepted worldwide.\u201d Explaining how his mentor acclimatised to the new workspace, he adds, \u201cWatanabe took great pains in the early days to get along with the workforce in our factory. He learnt a bit of Tamil and taught basic Japanese to some of the staff and their children on weekends. He would spend half the year in Chennai, and loved to partake in social gatherings, our festivals, and cultural practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bridlen, a family owned business from Chennai, on its Indo-Japanese collaboration to craft Goodyear welted shoes Leather shoes, made to order, that fit like a glove, and look like a dream. That is a rare luxury in a market dominated by e-commerce, where even designer brands are churning out collections by the season. For the true … Continue reading How Bridlen is using its Indo-Japanese collaboration to craft Goodyear welted shoes in Chennai<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazing-feats","category-business-economy","category-records-india-national","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16514"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16517,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16514\/revisions\/16517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}