Suede and calf leather Stefano Bemer bespoke shoes, circa 2010. Photo by Darren House
“A shoe is an object which, if of excellent quality, helps us to walk and live more comfortably.” So begins the marketing material for Stefano Bemer’s bespoke and ready-to-wear shoe lines.
Having known Stefano as a friend and customer, I can attest to the reality of this statement. But, if I may, I would like to embellish by adding that Stefano Bemer has helped me live more elegantly. In short, he has made me a better man.
Sydney tailor, John Cutler, introduced me to Stefano on a trip to Pitti Immagine Uomo in 2007. Meeting one morning on the Ponte Vecchio, a little too early after a night on the local Chianti, we walked the back streets of Florence, away from the tourist traps centred on the city’s ancient and famous bridge. Finally, we arrived at a hole-in-the-wall shopfront on Borgo San Frediano that was no more than a wooden door and a single window exhibiting a black oxford lace-up, above which ran a brick arch filled in with Art Nouveau lacework.
“Each time I tie the flat laces of his bespoke creations I am honoured, quite literally, to be walking in his shoes”
But what beauty lay inside. Glass cabinets and wooden racks heaved with Stefano’s impressive bespoke shoe collection, built up over 20 years. Deciding instantly to commission my first shoes, I held aloft an immaculate brown-leather-and-blue-suede button-up boot with hand-sewn buttonholes. I glanced sheepishly at Stefano. He glared back at me with his piercing blue eyes.
“You don’t want that. It is not good for when you are alone with the ladies at night.”
The English wasn’t quite perfect, but I perfectly understood his meaning. So I moved onto a pair of dark brown and burgundy spectators.
I returned to Florence six months later, full of anticipation at experiencing my ‘try-ons’, only to be disappointed when a pair of shoes appeared from the rear workshop not quite to my specification. I tried them on and Stefano tweaked the fit. I later learned Stefano threw them away after making the last modifications. My ‘try-ons’ would have graced the grandest shoe shops in the world. But there you are…
The completed correspondents arrived by post several months later. On opening the wooden wine crate of a shoebox, pot-pourri from Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella wafted into my nostrils. It’s a scent won’t forget.
Stefano Bemer, right, points out the benefits of his custom shoes to David Dowsey in 2008
Personal touches, like stamping my initials in black on the shoebox and in gold on the two large brushes provided and on each chiseled sole, won me over. Slipping on the meticulously constructed correspondents sealed the deal.
Despite his bear-like visage, Stefano Bemer appeared small and delicate, alongside my six-feet-three-inch frame. I knew of his various health issues from the beginning, and the large vertical scar running down his hairy chest did not escape my notice, either. He was not a well man.
But Stefano always exhibited a ‘devil may care’ attitude that inspired. Having a second – or third – glass of wine or another spoonful of tiramisu was as high a priority as regularly checking his insulin levels. He lived to enjoy life, and he lived life to the full.
But health issues eventually caught up with him and he passed away at only 48. The funeral was held at the Chiesa del Cestello in Florence, Stefano’s coffin draped with his well-worn apron and a suede and leather two-tone shoe.
The Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, provided a tribute of the highest honour by stating that Stefano “was a man who incarnated the true essence of the Florentine artisan”.
Stefano began in the trade mending shoes in the early 1980s. When the village cobbler died, Stefano struck out on his own, setting up a repair shop in 1983, in Greve, Chianti. He soon moved on to building his own shoes, with no formal training, and transferred to Florence in 1987 to offer his bespoke artistry to a wider audience. He launched a ready-to-wear line, as good as anything on the market, in 2000. Made-to-measure followed in 2004. Stefano was on the way to becoming one of the world’s master bespoke shoemakers.
Famously stubborn, he knocked back an approach by Gucci to purchase his brand, preferring to remain the master of his domain. His lack of penetration into major markets was, at least in part, due to his insistence on charging what his shoes were worth. Compromise wasn’t an option.
I recall him slamming the telephone down when a distributor asked for a discount. “If I find out that shops are selling my shoes on sale, I will not give them any more shoes,” he said. He soon calmed down and walked me around the corner, near his Bemer’s ready-to-wear shop, for cafe ‘shakerato’ (black coffee shaken with ice).
Happily, Stefano trained several talented apprentices, some of whom have created their own successful businesses, including Saskia Wittmer in Florence, Norman Vilalta in Barcelona, and Justin FitzPatrick (the Shoe Snob) in London. But he never lived down one would-be shoemaker who shyly entered his store in 1999. Enquiring if Stefano would take him on as an apprentice, the man turned up at the workshop the next day, and every other day for the next 11 months. His name was Daniel Day-Lewis.
The Oscar-winning actor had dropped out of filmmaking to concentrate on what was important to him – shoemaking. Stefano is on the record as saying that Day-Lewis was an excellent study, but one who was overly hard on himself when his stitching strayed from dead even.
Removing a pair of Stefano’s shoes from an unvarnished wooden wine box now has greater poignancy. Inside the last pair I commissioned from him, stamped and handwritten, are my name and the date ‘Giugno 2012’, the month before he passed away. They must be amongst the last shoes completed before his death.
They are now a time capsule. But they won’t rest unworn in my closet. I will walk in them, just as Stefano had wished. Now, more than ever, each time I tie the flat laces of his bespoke creations I am honoured, quite literally, to be walking in his shoes.
Ciao, Stefano. Elegante fino all’ultimo.
The customised sole of a bespoke pair of Stefano Bemer Russian reindeer leather boots made in 2009 from leather tanned in 1786