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The Journey of a Crown Northampton Shoe

A breakdown of the key stages that constitute the production of a Crown Northampton shoe, from design to clicking, closing, and beyond.

James Smith

Together with

I think part of justifying spending more on quality products is knowing the journey behind them. The stories, design choices, and nuances that make them worth your investment. The journey of a product from concept to physical entity. Where is it made? Who by? And why? Take a pair of jeans, for example. A pair off the rack in the mall is made almost purely to make someone money. A pair of high-quality Japanese selvedge denim jeans is also made to make money, but also to passionately honour a bastion of Americana style, highlight and sustain craftsmanship, or cherish tradition. If you appreciate products that mean something, you’ll likely already appreciate Crown Northampton.

Crown Northampton operates out of its namesake and the heart of global shoemaking, Northampton. It makes arguably the best causal leather sneakers in the world using the finest materials and a range of time-honored crafting methods garnered throughout its longstanding history in Northampton, which stretches back over a century.

Before the customer laces them up for the first time, each Crown Northampton shoe goes on a journey that’s completely unique to the brand. Considering our focus on storied products that are built to last, we’re taking a closer look at that journey today, from Crown’s design process, to clicking the leather, lasting, and boxing them up.

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Design

Design at Crown Northampton is headed up by Chris Woodford, a 5th-generation shoemaker whose great-grandfather founded E. Woodford & Sons over 100 years ago. All design is done by Chris and his team within the walls of Crown Northampton, with shoemaking techniques from pattern cutting to binding, lasting, and welting being starting points for design. Instead of worrying about how to make something in a cost-prohibitive manner, Crown focuses on how the product can be the best it can be, from materials to the skilled staff required, without worrying about cost implications. This top-down method naturally creates minimal designs. Which is perfect for what Crown Northampton wants to create – footwear that matters and outlives trends.

Made in Northampton

The historic shoemaking pantheon in Northampton is something special and worth preserving. When creating Crown Northampton, Chris Woodford wanted the company to be as much about people as it is about product. He set out to make factory jobs in shoemaking a more attractive proposition than in previous generations. Rather than slogging it out on a production line, Crown wants to nurture careers, keeping skill and passion within Northampton shoemaking.

The staff Crown Northampton employs are typically 3rd and 5th generation shoemakers, whose knowledge is vital when designing, pattern cutting, and manufacturing. Upon speaking with Chris Woodford, you get the idea that the whole operation would not be worth it for him if he could not work with the Northampton shoemaking community.

Made to Order

The physical journey of a Crown Northampton shoe begins when a customer makes an order. Every piece of footwear is made to order through Crown’s direct-to-consumer model. As well as allowing customers to choose different sole colors and width fittings, this model means that each shoe is unique and built at a pace that allows for the highest quality. A complete antithesis of mass production.

Crown Northampton shoes take time and effort to craft, so getting the right fit is essential. As such, Crown has an in-factory customer service team on hand to help every customer get the right fit. High instep, different size feet, extra wide, lumps and bumps — the team has experience supporting thousands of customers to get the perfect fit before crafting begins.

If you’re in the UK, you can visit Crown’s factory for an even more personal experience at no extra cost. If you’re ever in London, you can take a ~1-hour train to Northampton and visit the factory, get measured up, and see Crown’s community-driven operation that produces some of the finest footwear in the world.

Crown Northampton Harlestone Derby – Mustard Badalassi Minerva Box, available for $555 from Crown Northampton.

Clicking Room

Once the leather is picked, it’s time to click. Clicking refers to the process of cutting the leather into the pattern for the shoe. The term ‘clicking’ comes from the sound that old clicking knives made as they left the clicking table. This term endures even though most modern ‘clicking’ is done by a pneumatic machine.

Crown Northampton still hand-cuts a lot of its leather, especially with its newer designs and those with higher price points. Working with premium and more unusual leathers like shell cordovan, buffalo leather, and other textured hides takes a lot of skill, so each cut is carefully calculated. Any wastage is passed to Crown’s small leather goods team to be made into belts, cardholders, and glasses cases without the material cost. These products are offered to those purchasing footwear, with the material cost savings passed on.

Prep/Closing room

The clicked leather then hits the Closing Room. In here, two processes occur. The upper is first prepped by lining it, skiving (carefully removing bulk/thinning) certain areas that are to be folded or stitched, marking where those stitches will go. Once ready, the prepped pieces are passed over for closing. There’s often some back and forth between prep and closing — no steps are too many to craft the perfect sneaker.

The term ‘closing’ may sound conclusive, but it’s actually one of the formative steps in shoemaking. Closing refers to the process of sewing together the different pieces of clicked and prepped leather to form the upper. As well as stitching pieces together (which Crown does by hand and/or machine, depending on the product), closing also includes adding stiffeners to areas like the toe and heel. Crown doesn’t only source top-drawer leathers for its uppers and linings, every component, down to the stiffeners — also made from oak bark tanned leather from J & FJ Baker — are of the highest quality.

It’s in this stage that Crown flaunts a lot of its traditional processes, including hand-stitched ‘dog tails’ on the back of sneakers and hand-crafted French binding on their hand-stitched range. A maker writes inside each upper in the Crown closing room, with design notes such as the leather color, size, and width, and signs this off with ‘Made in England’.

Crown Northampton Adnitt GAT Shoe in Sand Calf, available for $305 from Crown Northampton.

Lasting and making room

The production of the upper in the closing room is only half the process. Crown shoes now hit the lasting and making room. As every shoe is a different leather and size, Crown hand lasts each pair. This allows the maker to give undivided attention to each pair, rather than letting a machine do all of the work.

Better yet, every last is from the world-renowned Spring Line Lastmakers. Also based in Northampton, Spring Line is the last remaining last-maker in Great Britain and is considered the best in the business.

The closed-uppers are molded around the last by hand, which involves skillfully stretching and shaping the upper around the last and using a lasting pliers to firm up the new structure. This process requires a masterful amount of force to ensure the upper is shaped and trimmed up properly without spoiling it. A layer of cork is added for comfort, and we’re ready to sole.

Once the upper is shaped, it is placed inside its outsole unit, and the last is removed in order for that outsole to be stitched on. In the case of Crown Northampton’s calling-card cup soled sneakers, a custom cup sole is sidewall stitched to the newly crafted upper.

At this point, a Crown Northampton shoe is almost completed.

Shoe room

Shoes finally hit the Crown Northampton Shoe Room. It’s in this room that each pair gets a pair of vegetable-tanned insoles, and a final inspection and lace-up, before being packed into their box with a branded dust bag and shipped out to their lucky new owner.

All of the packaging and presentation materials, right down to the shoebox and dustbags, are made within an hour of Crown Northampton’s factory.

Onwards – To Their Owner

Crown Northampton shoes come in a range of silhouettes, sizes, colors — but their journey isn’t truly complete until they reach their new owner. Shoes and sneakers of this quality can be gawped at, but their true value is in being worn — a lot. Crown Northampton builds each pair to outlast any adjacent product, and its community of loyal customers enjoys years of wear out of each pair.

Crown Northampton Abbey Unlined Oxford – Natural Horween Dearborn, available for $555 from Crown Northampton.

Back Again?

Sometimes Crown Northampton shoes come back to their birthplace for some TLC after years of daily wear.

Crown’s aforementioned Shoe Room is also a hub for customer service. It’s where they ship out their world-class shoes, but also receive them for re-sole/re-furb. A look at the shelves of Crown’s Shoe Room will exhibit pairs of Crown Northampton’s which have been worn 3-5 times a week for 5 or 6 years and are only just at the point of needing shoemaker attention.

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