Making Men’s Dress Shoes from Vintage Jackets

So I moved to Berlin from the US like every other big-city expat looking to escape overpriced everything and actually afford rent, and within weeks I was prowling thrift stores and flea markets pretending I had refined taste while secretly just looking for cheap stuff.

Vintage Wool Tweed Jackets

But here's the thing about Berlin's vintage scene: it's absolutely mental. These weekend markets are archaeological digs of European fashion history. I'd stumble through rooms hung with more wool tweed sport jackets than a 1980s country club reunion. Gorgeous herringbone patterns, wild tartans that screamed "I own a castle in Scotland," and tweeds in colors that would make a peacock jealous. Here are a few of them.

The tragic part? Nobody wanted them. These masterpieces were hanging there like fashion orphans, marked down to practically nothing because apparently having shoulders wider than a smartphone makes you unwearable these days. I'm talking about jackets that some German businessman probably wore to close deals while listening to David Bowie on his Sony Walkman, now destined for textile recycling because skinny lapels went out of style. This blue tweed was one of my favorites.

And it genuinely irritated me. Here's this incredible craftsmanship—hand-woven tweeds that took weavers months to create—getting tossed out because trends moved on. Meanwhile, we're all now wearing disposable fashion that falls apart after three washes.

That's when I had what I can only describe as either genius or a complete mental breakdown: What if I turned these forgotten beauties into shoes?

Wool Tweed Shoes?

Now, before you ask—yes, wool tweed shoes sound ridiculous. Men's footwear is basically a monument to low risk, playing it safe. Black shoes, brown shoes, maybe navy or oxblood (yes, that’s a color) if you're feeling "adventurous." The only time guys wear color on their feet is sneakers or via colorful shoelaces, but come on—we can do better, right?

The technical hurdles were significant. Tweed doesn't behave like leather when you try to wrap it around a foot. It's stubborn. It has opinions. But we found incredible artisan shoemakers in Spain who were brave enough to experiment with my absurd idea, and I wanted everything: style, comfort, exclusivity, weather resistance, sustainability.

Our Process

Here's how we cracked it: We'd carefully dissect each jacket like a fashion surgeon, cutting strategic pieces for shoes and a matching belt. Every cut had to be perfect—one jacket makes one pair, no do-overs.

Then the real magic happens in Spain. These craftsmen create an incredible sandwich construction, layering tweed over special rubberized fabric, adding a canvas base, then using heat and pressure under a giant roller to fuse everything together. Here are two swatches below that show the original wool tweed, rubberized fabric in between, and the black canvas base material.

Wool Tweed Behaves Like Leather

The result? A composite material that looks like vintage tweed but acts like leather. It's breathable, water-resistant, and flexible enough to make comfortable shoes. The whole shoe-making process takes three months, which in today's Amazon Prime world feels like geological time, but the results are worth it.

Our First Customers

We launched with fifty customers from Berlin, Basel, and Zurich who were either fashion-forward or completely insane—the jury's still out. We hand-cut every jacket in our apartments, turning our living rooms into what looked like a very stylish crime scene... piles of scraps on the floor and stacks of beautiful wool.

Now every pair we make tells a story. That businessman's power jacket from the '90s? It's walking around Berlin again, just on different feet. These aren't just shoes—they’re an expression of your personality with a serious dose of style and "I bet you've never seen this before."

So what started as me being annoyed at wasteful fashion trends became a small rebellion against boring men's footwear and throwaway culture. Who knew?! Here's one of my new favorites—colorful yet understated, classic yet modern: Blue Multicolor Men's Dress Shoes + Belt