This is a design mockup. The shop named here — Last & Awl — is invented, and its address, phone number, prices and job histories are placeholders. The photographs are real and are not of that shop: they are of Mace Shoe Repair, a cobbler on the square in Liberty, Missouri, from that shop’s own Facebook and Instagram.

The display window of Mace Shoe Repair in Liberty, Missouri: a white cowboy boot on its box, a pair of green canvas high-tops, a straw bag and a printed card reading WE REPAIR DRESS, CASUAL AND RUGGED OUTDOOR FOOTWEAR WITH GENUINE VIBRAM SOLES.
The window at Mace Shoe Repair, Liberty, Missouri. Handwritten prices in the frame have been blurred out.

On the square since 1946

Almost everything that comes in here was thrown away by somebody first.

A good pair of shoes is built to be taken apart. That is not sentiment, it is construction: a welted shoe has a stitch line specifically so the sole can come off and go back on, four or five times, over thirty years. Most people never find out because nobody told them, and the shoes went in a bag for the charity shop with plenty of life left in the uppers.

So the honest way to show this trade is not to describe it. It is to put the work in front of you with what it cost and how long it took, and let you decide whether it was worth the money. The jobs below are written out plainly, and where a repair went badly or came back, that is on the page too.

If you are holding something and wondering, ring 816 555 0162 and describe it out loud. Half the calls we get end with us saying it is not worth doing, and that is a fine outcome for everyone.

A pair of polished black cowboy boots standing on the work counter at Mace Shoe Repair, shelves of boxed and ticketed work behind them.
Finished boots on the counter at Mace, shelves of ticketed work behind.
A sepia photograph from the middle of the last century: two men in a shoe repair shop, one in a leather apron, standing between a glass display case of polishes and laces and a wall of shoe boxes.

From the shop’s own archive

Mace Shoe Repair has stood on the Liberty square since 1940. This is the photograph they use themselves, and it is the argument for the whole trade: the same counter, the same cases of polish and laces, the same job, for eighty-five years.

Photograph: Mace Shoe Repair. Neither the men in it nor the shop are connected to the invented business named on this page.

Off the bench

Four jobs, written out. No photographs are attached to them, because these four are illustrative and no photograph of them exists — putting a real picture beside an invented job would make the picture a lie.

Full leather resole

A pair of thirty-year-old oxfords the owner had already replaced twice

The uppers were dry but nothing was cracked, which is the whole test. New leather sole, rubber top piece on the heel because he walks on concrete all day, edges dressed and burnished back to the original colour.

$98 · nine working days · he brought the second pair in the following week

Heel block and welt

A work boot that had been resoled once already, badly

Someone had glued a wedge sole onto a welted boot, which holds for about a season and then peels in one piece. We took the whole thing back to the welt, restitched it, and built a proper stacked heel.

This is the repair we most often have to talk people out of, because the cost of undoing a bad job is higher than the cost of the original good one. It was worth it here because the boot was worth it. Often it is not.

$145 · two weeks · the wedge sole was the previous owner’s idea, not ours

A week, start to finish

What actually comes through the door

Shoes are about half of it. The rest is bags, belts, luggage, dog collars, tack, a saxophone strap once, and a great many zips. If it is leather or canvas and it has stitching, it is worth asking about, even when we end up saying no.

Everything here left on a Friday · nothing on this bench was new when it arrived

The one that came back

A resole we got wrong, and what we did about it

A pair of women’s boots came back three weeks later with the sole lifting at the arch. The cause was ours: the leather went on damp because we were behind and somebody rushed it.

We redid the pair at no charge and gave the owner the reason rather than an excuse. We are telling you here because a repair shop that claims it never happens is a repair shop that has not been open long.

Redone free · four days · she still comes in

A second view into the Mace Shoe Repair window: a leather bench seat, a cast-iron shoe-stretching stand, a boot box, canvas high-tops, and the shop's printed repair card listing Rockport, Johnston & Murphy, Cole Haan, Florsheim, Timberland, Dexter, Red Wing and Allen Edmonds.

What a repair shop puts in its window

Not a slogan. A printed card listing the makes they will take, a cast-iron stretching stand, and whatever came off the bench that week, arranged on grey felt where the light from the square can reach it.

Photograph: Mace Shoe Repair. Prices and the shop’s own signage have been cropped or blurred out of frame.

Close view of a cream western boot with cut-out scrollwork and a stacked leather heel, standing behind glass.
Cut-out scrollwork, stacked heel. The heel is the part that goes first.
A woven straw handbag shaped like a cat's head, with dark stitched eyes and a nose, propped in a shop window.
Straw, stitched by hand. Half of what comes in is not a shoe at all.
A worn olive-green canvas high-top sneaker with orange laces and a white rubber toe cap, on grey felt.
Canvas counts. So do the laces, the eyelets and the toe cap.

What things cost

Everything below is a starting price for ordinary work, and everything is quoted properly when the item is in front of us. Nobody has ever been charged more than the quote.

Leaving something with us

Bring both shoes even when one is fine, because a pair that has been resoled on one side only walks strangely for a month. Take the laces out or leave them in, it makes no difference to us.

You will get a paper ticket with a date on it. That date is the honest one, not the hopeful one, and in October it is further away than it is in June. If we are going to miss it, we ring you before the day rather than after.

Ring 816 555 0162 before driving out if it is a Saturday, because Saturdays close at noon and we mean noon.