The picture – The beauty of a square waist

A handmade bevelled waist can be strikingly elegant and make for a beautifully sleek shoe. But look at a fully handmade very well-executed square waist, like this one here by Akira Tani, which is strikingly good looking in a different way. A different kind of craftsmanship, but just as impressive.

When you make a bevelled round or ridge fiddle back waist, the fact that a proper one only can be made fully handmade often makes this waist being ranked higher than a fully square waist. And sure, skill and more work of some kinds are needed for that. But when you do a square waist you have to do a lot more and visible stitches (the blind welt of a bevelled waist hides the stitches, which therefore always are made more sparse with no need for refinement since you can’t see them), and to finish the welt on the inside of the arch where it can be hard to reach is not easy to do well. It should not be underrated.