MILITARY CANVAS TRAINING SHOES

The MILITARY CANVAS TRAINING SHOES are a high-top sneaker made from a cotton canvas with a vulcanized rubber sole. They take their reference from footwear issued to the United States Army during the 1940s. Though the surviving documentation from this period is limited, archive photography and vintage sources show us that multiple types of canvas training shoes were procured for use in domestic training camps across the United States during the Second World War. This pair have been painstakingly crafted following examples from within our own archive.

Construction follows the traditional vulcanized method and is carried out in Japan. Vulcanization, developed in the nineteenth century by Charles Goodyear in the United States and independently by Thomas Hancock in Britain, involves heating rubber with sulphur to create chemical cross links within the material. This process stabilized natural rubber, preventing it from becoming brittle in cold temperatures or overly soft in heat.

This method results in a sole that remains flexible while offering long term wear. However, because the process depends heavily on skilled manual labour and specialised equipment, only a small number of factories in Japan are still capable of producing shoes in this manner.

• Custom 100% Cotton Canvas Fabric
• Vulcanized Sole Construction
• Made in Japan