London
2023
Super Trunk Show
World Championships
2023
Super Trunk Show
World Championships
The 2023 World Championships in Shoemaking was special for me due to the competition’s challenge chosen theme:
In fact the whole boot is extremely powerful visually, starting with the shape of the last with extreme curves ending with contrasting stitches, gold and green over the black leather. The most intriguing element of this boot is not so easy to spot at a first glance, only a few people notice that something is exceptional and it is not the very high density of the welt stitching (30 steps/ inch).
It is in the construction method, considered by many as the Holy Grail in shoemaking. The ‘fully closed construction’ is a way of trapping the last on purpose inside the shoe by closing the uppers without any opening and yet the shoe will still be hollow. In the golden years of shoemaking this was often the mark of a true master.
The construction method needed to be rediscovered since nothing like this exists today and the knowledge was lost for more than a century.
After two years of trying various techniques, I finally perfected a viable solution. The tongue of the boot is much longer than usual and is stitched all around to the uppers thus trapping the last inside.
World renowned shoe nerd Justin Fitz Patrick (of The Shoe Snob) one of the organizers and permanent jury member of the World Championships in Shoemaking, himself a shoe designer, described this boot as ‘On of The Greatest Boot Ever Made’.
London
2019
Super Trunk Show
the second edition of the
World Championships
2019
Super Trunk Show
the second edition of the
World Championships
I managed to jump from relative unknown anonymity straight into fourth place which surprised many people and entered me into the world of elite shoemakers.
My shoe was very well received especially because of the way I closed the uppers and it received the highest score for difficulty. My inspiration came from 18th century shoemaking and goes further by overlapping the upper leather over itself. This technique is a first as far as I know and has opened a new door for shoemakers, to play and improve the appeal of their products.
Now many well-known shoemakers from around the world have since borrowed this idea and also have started to use it. It is not yet clear to many how innovative this technique really is so I decided to take the development further and present an entire collection called: ‘The Highway Collection’ at the 2025 Universal Exhibition in Osaka. The shoe style that the competition entry required was the brown full brogue long-wing Oxford.
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© 2025 Victor Vulpe All rights reserved.
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