There are eleven people at Rue Ateliers and roughly nine hundred wooden lasts, which is a ratio that tells you most of what you need to know about the place.

The lasts

A last is the wooden form a shoe is built around. Most houses now rent theirs, or work from a plastic copy, or buy a set and replace it every few years as the range changes. Rue Ateliers has kept every last it has ever cut.

This is why they can resole a shoe made in 1994 and have it fit the way it fitted then. The form still exists, on a shelf, labelled in pencil.

Stitching, not gluing

The soles are stitched. It is slower, it is more expensive, and it is the only reason a pair of mules can be taken apart and put back together four or five times.

Ask them about cemented soles and you will get a long silence and then a change of subject.