Greek Trend Alert: Handmade Leather Sandals

Marissa Sunshine
May 12, 2017
2 min read

The outside view of the Sandal Workshop Store located in Fira, Santorini.

The main mode of transportation in Greece is by foot. In order to survive the miles of walking you will endure, you must find a pair of shoes that are able to last the distance. Yet, you want to look stylish in the cute outfits you packed for your trip. Handmade leather sandals are the answer to all of your problems. These sandals are fashionable, and easy to match with, and they are also the most comfortable shoes you will slip on your feet. Your Cinderella moment will come true, when these shoes mold to your foot, and fit perfectly.

Inside the Sandal Workshop Store, you can see a numerous amount of handmade sandals. The store owner is making his sandals by hand.

When wandering around the many cute shops in Greek towns, you never know what you will stumble across. This handmade leather shoe shop is a diamond in the rough. The outside of the store, does not give you a glimpse of the beauty and history of what lays inside. This family-run shop has been around for over 100 years. Yannis, the storeowner and shoemaker, has been working at this store for 55 years. His father owned and created shoes for their shop for 50 years before him. The family business has been passed down for generations, as Yannis’s sons now own another shoe shop in Santorini as well.

Yannis making handmade shoes in his shop, The Sandal Workshop, in Fira, Santorini.

The tools Yannis uses to make his sandals.

As you walk into the store, you will find Yannis sitting at his tool desk cutting leather, and making his sandals. He says that it has become second nature for him, and it takes only minutes to make each pair. The machines located around his leather shop, belonged to his late father. They are all over 90 years old, and originated from Italy. Each shoe is made from cow leather from the Greek Island of Crete, while the rubber soles of the shoes come from Italy. Each sandal takes about a quarter of leather and Yannis can make 60 pairs in one day!

Yannis calls himself “the specialist”. He can look at your feet and correctly guess your shoe size without even using a measuring tool! He considers the sandals in the picture to the left, to be his most popular pair. In all of the pictures above, he's creating this style of sandal. This style is popular in Greece, because its origins lay in Antiquity. The God Hermes wore the first pair of winged sandals. The early Greeks wore sandals with many leather straps to safely secure their feet.

You can check out Yannis's Sandal Workshop on Facebook here.