Beautiful bespoke shoes

Form is everything at the Maison Corthay workshop in Paris. The company was founded in 1990 by Pierre Corthay, France’s only Maître d’Art in bootmaking. “Shoes are an essential part of the sculpture of the body,” he says. He considers the craft of creating bespoke men’s shoes to be an “empirical profession” and that a shoemaker “only becomes good after a thousand clients”. His artisans take many measurements, looking carefully and touching the foot, to create a visual and tactile map in order to create the perfect pair of bespoke shoes for each client.