Bridlen’s Founders Dynasty is Costly not Expensive!

A formal shoe brand or a trailblazer, an archetypal of Indian shoemaking prowess, or an atelier brimming with passion and emotions, Bridlen is a sensory overload: a snob’s paradise that holds significant context in an era when Gentlemen opt for classic styles out of desire rather than obligation.

The Bridlen customer, meanwhile, is one of taste and culture: The Chennai-based Maison dedicates itself to an extremely rare cross of personalities proficient in seeing the incredible artistry that goes into a pair of ❝proper❞ shoes and has the wherewithal to own one (at least One).

However, from the compliments and queries I often acquire, I can attest that the subtle appeal of a Bridlen can seize the zealot of sneakers. It’s just that the well-versed know what exactly in a pair of Bridlen that’s leaving everybody stunned.   

Bridlen is underpinned by decades of design and making flair needed to compose relevant Classic dress shoes embracing understated elegance suitable for the modern man, to compose ❝Old Money Aesthetic❞ that would otherwise be old-fashioned relics worn by an eccentric or a menswear insider.

Instead of voicing their ancestry through media and editorial coverage, Bridlen communicates the learnings and predecessor’s vision through a line of shoes and boots depicting the Founder’s feelings and beliefs towards their creation.

Bridlen takes great pride in exhibiting models from the Founders Line when global occasions—meaning Super Trunk Shows, Walk-in events, et cetera—call to put a single pair on top of its pyramid.

The Founders Collection has details (and pricing) to trouble even the most aggressive critics: Many aren’t immediately apparent from a picture on a phone or computer screen and can only gleaned in person.

The Models, constituting the Founders’ collection, borrow functional fringes from the label’s Main Line but are soaked in visually adorable details often associated with bespoke commissioning.

If you don’t want to walk away unimpressed from the reading below, hold your Practical reflexes and disperse those spectra of senses—from titillation to enlightenment—which you probably deploy while appreciating, for instance, fine arts or fine dining.

It took Bridlen eight years to transition from an upper maker to a complete shoemaker. Enough time to foster strong relationships with leading tanneries and hone the skills necessary to maximize the potential of their produce.

They still make uppers, but the highest-quality hides are now dedicated to their own brand. Thus, Bridlen never fails to win praise on the material front. The skins from the top tanneries depict the Founders Collection.

The top tanneries globally do not typically have large marketing budgets, resulting in low visibility and an esoteric affair. Translated to layman speak, below are the materials (and tanneries) from which most styles in the Founders Collection are clicked and developed.

Shell Cordovan Leather

from Shinki Hikaku Tannery in Japan

Arguably the most exciting of the whole eternity, Shell Cordovan, more a membrane than a skin, is a leathery utopia that uniquely bridges Casual and Formal clothing, Depth and Durability, Leather care and Human Indolence, as well as the patina character and Years of wear.

Why is it so expensive?

Scarcity and Preparation. If marketing strategies hadn’t escalated prices, these are the two main elements that add to the cost of anything expensive.  

Cordovan is a by-product of the horse meat industry in Quebec, France, and Belgium; Thus, the material has been far scarcer than cow leather.

A single horse provides only enough Cordovan for a single pair of shoes. The Cordovan should be from the hindquarters of the horsehide to label as the ❝Shell.❞

A lengthy tanning process (six or so months exactly) to achieve the tendency to ripple rather than crease, to let the hide suck oils until it forms the illusion that the colors are floating underneath a dull glow (which is often humiliated as ❝Plasticky❞).

See if you can rationalize the hefty price through this short depiction. However, there are some in-depth reads on Shell Cordovan here.

The Shinki Hikaku Tannery

I’m sure that it is not just me who did not know any tannery, other than the renowned Horween tannery in Chicago, that did Cordovan until Bridlen presented Shinki Hikaku of Japan.

After a little investigation and a few calls, I can see why Bridlen and its shoemakers picked them over Horween.

If Shinki Hikaku had seemed like a niche and a little too quiet, that was because its brasher rivals were better at shouting their successes. 

Shouting, in general, is not really the Japanese way. After the EU / Japan free trade agreement in 2019, Shinki started to speak up a bit.

Based in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, Shinki was established in 1951 and devoted solely to horse leather. In addition to Shell Cordovan, they also do other leathers from horse hides.

Calf Leather

from Tannerie D’Annonay in France

The most typical among proper shoemaking, Calf leather, as its name implies, is derived from the hide of a young calf. Interestingly, the age limit that defines this type of leather has been extended over the years—a topic worth a separate discussion!

Calf is, in fact, a blanket term that further veers off into different kinds of calf (Box, Curst, et cetera), but the softness, suppleness, and durability are its standard behaviors.

Its open-pour structure takes the pigments of polish and creams quite well and is arguably the most apt to forging the sought-after patina: the value that age puts on an object!

The Tannerie D’Annonay

There are so many tanneries producing (excellent quality) calf leather that it seems impossible to win praise in this segment except for the French Tannerie D’Annonay.  

A tannery in France since 1838 on some eight thousand sq. meters of space to produce leather twenty-three times that size—the finest of which is abode by Hermés, who owned the tannery for years.  

Black Box Calf

from Weinheimer in Germany

The most formal styles of The Founders Collection are crafted from Black Box Calf—a more rigid pre-dyed leather that often lends itself to styles prone to maintain a uniform look.

Such leather is for those who never fall short of reasons to get dressed up or often want to look sophisticated.

Weinheimer (formerly Freudenberg) in Germany

Tannerie D’Annonay is an implicit authority in Calf Leathers; However, no other tannery understands all the ins and outs of dying Box Calf in Black better than Weinheimer.

Weinheimer was the name of the town where Freudenberg, the tannery Weinheimer inherited concepts from as they stepped down in 2003, was founded.

A legendary German tannery that mainly made fantastic black box calf.

Shoegazing.com

Freudenberg produced some of the best black leather the world has ever seen.

TheShoesSnobBlog.com

Oak Tanned Leather Outsoles

from J&FJ Baker in Britain

The oldest and still existing tanning method where row hides remain trapped for months piled between tannin extracts of barks, cones, and leaves from various trees: oak, chestnut, mimosa, quebracho, olive, et cetera.

Why is it so expensive?

This lengthy tanning duration (around one year) drills durability (lasts three to five longer than ordinary outsole leather) and a higher price with oak-tanned leather.

J&FJ Baker in Britain

As the German J. R. Rendenbach stepped down in late 2021, the British J&FJ Baker remained the only tannery honoring such old tanning methods.

Even when they are not a lone producer of the oak-tanned leather outsole, their relatively softer, greasier, and easier-to-work-with leathers are favored over sturdy Rendenbach.

With over 150 years of experience in the veg tanning business, Baker has come closest of all available ones in resembling the original old Russian reindeer leather.

From cars to cups, homes to humans, suits to shoes—The vigor of ❝the form of an object’s surface❞ is The Basic paradigm, easily legible to even those with a palate not refined enough to characterize subtleties.

It should be something the eye doesn’t necessarily notice as it does color, but carefully combined shapes can create harmony and balance that one feels more than saw at first glance.

Fortunately (or unfortunately!), the shape(s)—that touches the emotions, inspires contemplation, and provokes discussion—cannot be produced en masse.

Forging an eye-soothing shape was, and still is, a time (and eventually money) gulping affair.

The Founders Line embraces that ineffably classic notion of shape for those who don’t speak Details.

The models here have shape, quite rightly, as the foot has shape. They are not a block. And they curve in many places, not just the instep and the arch. 

Machines can certainly handle this job, but to manifest the very essence of the last, artisans hand-pulls, nails (and Blocks, for weeks, when the design calls for it) the uppers.

Leather stiffeners are inserted between the lining and upper to keep the shape intact.

Have you worn a pair that looks after the curvature of your arch? Thus, before lacing them, this might seem like the case that is so after beauty for something purely utilitarian.

The pronounced curves of a properly fitted pair support and cup the arch. Models featuring a higher last definition tend to abut a large number of nerve endings—approximately 200,000—that our feet possess.  

The Founders 25 collection put Bridlen’s bottom-making (wasit slimming!) abilities into the limelight. Even the brand owner illustrates the Founders 25 through their sole unit.

It is incredibly easy to underestimate the intricate challenges and meticulous effort required to create a beautifully beveled waist.

Crafting a slim beveling sole unit can be daunting, even under a bespoke service, but it is doubly so otherwise. The Founders 25 serves on made-to-order vicinities.

Thus, featuring a pure bespoke melody—a tight waist, for instance—means penetrating the classic modern dilemma: a conflict between human heterogeneity and standardized sizes. 

To execute a slim waist while maintaining enough fitting potential to house the deviation between standard sizes, Bridlen, instead of stitching the waist, wood pegged it.

The front part of the welt—which still marks the complete perimeter of the shoe—is sewn to the outsole, but the rest is attached through small wooden pegs inserted with a punch and then hammered, all by hand.

Unlike seams that demand a certain margin, pegs are free from such constraints. They are meticulously hammered in from beneath the sole rather than being affixed to the edges.

Consequently, the sole can be trimmed in proximity to the upper, imparting the shoe with a strikingly fierce and aggressive last definition.

The wooden pegs pose no challenges when layered atop one another, a distinct advantage over metal ones. They swell under humidity, thus securing the shoe in place, while metal pegs don’t.  

The refined beveled profile is born from the artful shaping and sanding of the corkboard, seamlessly conveyed to the outsole through deliberate plowing and pressing.

Stacking the thin layers up into an inch-thick heel and doing a lot of back and forth to ensure it lands the same on both shoes is a time-consuming task. Thus, even higher-end shoemakers commonly use heels that come pre-made as blocks rather than building one layer by layer.

The fact that a stacked heel gives a pair an aesthetical edge has been much remarked upon; the fact it also holds a functional significance, less so.

As the layers stack, the curvy shape of the sole around the bottom of the heel is artfully converted into a flat platform; a functional amenity that can be traced by marking variations in each layer’s thickness—the outside is relatively thicker than the inside.

One can feel the inside support and a thorough trace beneath the bottom. The shoemaker, on the other hand, gets greater control over the overall balance of the shoe.

Ten layers form the heel of models featured in Bridlen’s Founders 25 collection, a huge leap from formerly featured models heeled with five layers.

The number of layers is, however, associated with the shoemaker-making prowess while fueling the aesthetic distinction a stacked heel produces. On top of it, Bridlen finishes the heel off with some brass nail embellishment, which might announce your arrival depending on how serene the room is.

Heel building, as a part of the classic shoemaking, doesn’t get talked about that much. It is much easier to show a half-sewn leather welt covered in white stitches, or someone hand-lasting an upper around the last.

Building the heel layer-by-layer is dull, and the results are often hidden—either because the result is just a smooth transition between the heel counter and the heel or because flaws are noticed foremost rather than perfections.

It’s what holds it all together. The active pulling of the length of a Ramie thread through (at least) two layers of leather. Comprehending stitching used to be so simple. However, Bridlen has put thought into it as well.

Shoemakers take great pride in cramming as many stitches as possible into an inch length of leather while giving their clients some newfound appreciation of their priced possessions.

For The Founders 25, The artists at Bridlen performed an exceptionally dense and tight stitching that imparts a delicate, string-like look to the seams.

Twenty stitches per inch on the upper leather and eight on the sole, such stitch density is a true work of art and requires a high level of skill, attention to detail, and quality material.

To make such insanely dense seams of up to twenty stitches per inch, then, of course, exceptionally high-quality materials were required, so that it wouldn’t just be torn apart. 

Achieving twenty stitches per inch is not easy, but it results in a shoe that separates itself with its beautiful and even stitch pattern. It’s an amenity that isn’t immediately apparent from a picture on a phone or computer screen, one has to see it alongside the pairs sewn with little consideration for elegance.

The reading, by far, might have made you understand that The Founders Collection (especially The Founders 25!) is a nuance-y affair—maybe too many nuances for the brain of an ❝outsider.❞

However, The Founders Collection talks about the areas where the level of craftsmanship can shine, and it also highly affects the appearance of the shoe, much more than what those ❝outsiders❞ usually think.

Design and pattern-piece placement, however, is an unsung art of high-end dress shoemaking that not many connoisseurs clapped eyes on. The impacts of a harmonized design and serene pattern placement are often underestimated.

Underestimated because it is an element people can focus on at the expense of the more important things—like what type of construction the shoe has undergone. How much are they shaping the waist and upper? The leather?

A pensive pattern-piece placement can help create a visual balance, a seamless and natural flow that guides the beholder effortlessly through the design. In this area, a pair of Bridlen never fails to maintain symmetry or deliver a sense of harmony.

Powered by various trails and layouts to discover the one that best accentuates the architectural features and unique characteristics of the style, every style in Bridlen’s arsenal beautifully fits the conjured image of that particular style.

But it can not exist purely for self-expression or to provoke thought. Design and pattern-piece placement serve a purpose—they solve a problem.

A proportional ratio between the cap and the vamp could keep them from forming atypical creases. Small design features, such as the width of the perforations and the depth of the outer ankle and back counter, play a significant role in the shoe’s fitting characteristics.

From creating patterns that conform to the last to incorporating them to enhance rather than hinder functionality, no corner or angle in Bridlen’s Founders Collection has been left redesigned.  

Viewed from a broader perspective, this particular section of the reading, if not the entirety, is hard to justify. The ideal Founders Collection patron isn’t about to be constrained by the narrow parameters of any review or article. Thus, while penning, it felt like I was acquainting someone to his regular route.

The Fifty thousand rupees pair of classic shoes—in anyone’s book—is a hefty purchase. When it comes to price, inevitably, one has to ask himself ❝What is thirty or fifty thousand rupees worth to him?❞

The Bridlen brand, in general, and The Founders Collection, in particular, are for those who do not think that’s an inconceivable amount of money to spend on dress shoes.

However, this doesn’t mean they’re exclusively for billionaires flying in luxury on private spacecraft. Such passionately made articles are for those beside or among them who have better taste than most.

The Founders Collection is tailored for the sophisticated gentleman who got (or made himself) financial wealth, developed a wealth of knowledge for finer things, and harbors a deep appreciation for understated elegance in style.

A financial flair (a very strong one!) is an implicit fundamental to enabling Expensive acquisitions. However, painstakingly created pieces, especially Classics crafted without regard to cost, need equally serious consideration and a fair bit of knowledge to recognize, process, and spell out where those nuances and quality lie.  

The Founders Collection is unlikely to please those new to classic shoes and those for whom fineness matters less.

Its specs are too posh to be used as true workhorses, and if that’s your use case, then you’d likely be more interested in the sensible end of the spectrum, perhaps Bridlen’s Essential or Main-Line!

Such dress shoes are made to be worn with beautifully tailored suits, shirts, and hand-stitched silk ties – although the brown Austere Adelaide, inspired by the casual nature of British country life, worked just as well with cords and blue jeans.

Designed for strolling across the pavements of Altamount, the polished floors of gentleman’s clubs, and the antique rugs of country houses. Of course, they’re also to be found on New York’s Upper East Side, and in Tokyo’s better restaurants.

The Founders Collection has grown into a realm that is widely adored, for the exact same reason, it is almost impossible for many to justify buying. It would not be a bold claim to see such shoes as an artifact from the length of work that goes into crafting them.

Many of its characteristics and construction nuances are borrowed from the finest examples from The World Championship in Shoemaking and the zenith of Bespoke, which meant they were, honestly, far too harsh and brutal to be taken seriously as an everyday shoe for most people.