Paraboot Michael

The Michael is a derby cut down to essentials. It has two pairs of eyelets and short laces, an apron seam round the toe finished with a raised piped edge, and thick, often grained, calf leather. The welt is turned outward and stitched twice where it can be seen, which is the Norwegian method, and beneath it is a thick sole of natural rubber. It is broad and rounded, heavier than a city shoe and lighter than a boot, and it is meant to be resoled rather than replaced.

Its maker began in Izeaux, a shoemaking village at the foot of the Alps. Rémy Richard set up on his own there in 1908, saw rubber-soled boots on a visit to America in 1926, and came home to vulcanise rubber soles and stitch them to leather; in 1927 he registered the name Paraboot, for the Brazilian port that shipped latex. His son Julien, running the firm after the war, refused to follow competitors into cheaper glued shoes and kept making welted ones for people who worked on their feet. In 1945, by the company's account, he brought out the Michael, built for rationing: few eyelets, short laces, strong stitching, natural rubber.

The shoe outlived the market it was made for. In 1983 the company filed for bankruptcy but was allowed to keep trading, and Paraboot credits demand for the Michael from Italy with saving it. By the late 1980s it was worn by Paris students, and in the early 1980s the London shopkeeper John Simons had been the first to stock it in Britain. Paraboot now has its own boutiques in Tokyo and Osaka.

The Richard family still owns the business, now in its fourth generation. In 2017 its old factories at Izeaux and Fures closed and production moved to a single new plant at Saint-Jean-de-Moirans, also in the Isère. The Michael is made there, in grained or smooth calf, on its rubber sole.