FEIT Footwear

Designed by Tull Price in New York, all FEIT products are built entirely by hand from natural materials, produced in limited numbers with a carefully selected group of master craftspeople from around the world.

FEIT was born as a reaction to mass consumerism and production, moving away from volume and excess and towards quality, sustainability, and the pursuit of product integrity. Tull Price refers to this movement as ‘neo luxury’.

FEIT shoes are constructed from a single piece of leather, hand stitched at the heel. Whereas most shoes are produced using multiple pieces of leather, FEIT’s one - piece upper is completely seamless, ensuring comfort and allowing the shoe break naturally and eventually shape and mold to the foot.

People, not machines, craft FEIT products. For thousands of years, humans produced products primarily by hand, building a global industry that employed workers in communities throughout the world. As machine automation and technology has advanced, human labor (and natural materials) is becoming the most expensive part of the production process. Corporations strive to deliver quarterly growth hence their focus increasingly moves toward automation as an opportunity to cut costs, thus rendering the human obsolete.

Though computer-automated production is better for the companies, it does not make it necessarily so for the customer, worker or the planet.

The use of computer-automated production has necessitated the increasing use of synthetic materials, which are more uniform and predictable in the production process. Feit believes that producing products by hand from natural materials creates a superior product and wearing experience. Human decision-making allows the maker to use our materials judiciously, and to adapt and improve the product as needed during construction.

To ensure complete comfort and to assist with in-between sizing, a set of cork - and buffalo leather insoles is included with each pair of shoes. The cork sole will provide additional padding that will mold to your foot, but FEIT shoes can also be worn without any footbeds.

FEIT footwear is mainly built using vegetable tanned cow hides, a byproduct of the meat industry. Almost every component in the brand’s footwear is made from leather: uppers, insoles, midsoles, outsoles, heels and laces. ‘Vegetable tanning’ is an artisanal process to transform animal skins. The process takes advantage from the tannic acids naturally found in some plant species, by using the barks, branches, leaves and even some fruits in some specific techniques.

Vegetable leather will develop a patina and age beautifully over time.

Synthetic materials require the use of toxic materials, petrol and energy and you can’t ever destroy them - they become landfill. When leather is treated naturally the difference in the quality and the environmental impact is massive. As all FEIT materials are natural, the product will eventually biodegrade and return to the Earth.

As long as you use and maintain your vegetable-tanned leather product, you consume less and will be diminishing your footprint on the environment.

Discover our cherry-picked selection of FEIT footwear in our e-shop and Antwerp store.