Shoes worth keeping

We started Solwen because we were tired of shoes that fell apart in a season — glued soles you can't replace, leather that cracks, a landfill's worth of footwear bought and binned every year. We wanted to make the opposite: shoes built around the welt, so a worn sole is a visit to the cobbler, not the end of the road.

Everything is drawn in our studio and made by hand in a family workshop near Porto, in Portugal, where the same craftspeople have been lasting and stitching shoes for three generations. We work in vegetable-tanned leathers, natural rubber and jute, and we keep the line tight: boots, sneakers, dress shoes, loafers, sandals — and the care kit to keep them all going.

How we make them

Most of our leather shoes are Goodyear-welted: a strip of leather — the welt — is stitched to the upper and the insole, and the outsole is then stitched to the welt. It is slower and more expensive than gluing, and it is the whole point. When the sole wears through, a cobbler simply unpicks it and stitches on a new one. The shoe you love keeps going.

For sneakers and summer styles we use vulcanised and cup-sole constructions chosen for comfort and durability, and we say so plainly on every product page so you always know what you're buying.

Made to be kept

Buying fewer, better shoes is the most sustainable thing any of us can do. So we sell shoe trees and a proper care kit, we publish care notes on every page, and we offer a resole service at our workshop for as long as you own a welted pair. Look after them and they'll outlast the trends by years.

The team

We're a small group of designers, leather-workers and shoe nerds spread between our studio and the workshop. The names behind Solwen will appear here soon.

• [Team member — pending]
• [Team member — pending]