One of the main inspirations for the Gentleman’s Corner is sharing our passion for footwear with others who are likeminded. And often this includes sharing between different authors writing for the GC.

For his post on August 11 Nick Pettifer was doing some serious digging on the proper terminology for the construction of the heel and rand of a shoe. Before responding to his email, I never really realised how complicated our industry makes things that should be relatively straightforward.

The key issues were the role that rands play in normal vs bespoke shoes, and the technical name for both the back of the shoe and its support (Which is the heel? Do people refer to heel lifts or the heel cup?)

The rand is a bit tricky. Here’s the quick answer. The rand is the part of the sole that sticks out from the side of the shoe, as seen in a top down view of it. A shoe like a ballet slipper has no rand. Most shoes do.

But to make it a bit more complicated, in a welted shoe, the strip that runs around the shoe (from the front edge of one heel, around the toe, to the front edge of the heel on the other side) is called a welt. This is the strip of leather that is stitched to the upper, and then stitched to the sole. Technically speaking, in a welted shoe, the rand is only on the heel seat (the part of the sole that sticks out at the back of the heel.)

Can you point to the rand, lifts and heel cup?

In practice, most factories and shoemakers don’t make a distinction. So in a welted shoe, welt = rand. In a shoe made via another type of construction (Blake, Bologna, Moccasin) the rand runs all the way around the shoe and there is no welt.

This is based on the type of construction and is not a consideration of whether it is bespoke, bench-made, or mass-produced. It’s the same for any type of production method. However, the bespoke makers tend to be more traditional and rigorous in their naming conventions than the others.

The back part of the shoe is indeed a heel lift. Most people call this a top lift. Though in a welted shoe, it is technically the rand. The individual layers of leather that make up a heel stack are called lifts.

A heel cup is a well-used phrase for the back curve of the shoe, but again it’s not technically correct. This comes more from trainers than classic shoe making, where that curve is technically called the heel counter. (Inside and outside counter to be exact.) But let’s not worry about the details.

For a further discussion on how shoes are constructed, here is a post from Ask Andy About Clothes that has diagrams of several different shoe constructions.