American Duchess Shoes Made in Portugal

This season marks the first collection of American Duchess shoes made in Portugal! We’re pretty excited about this and want to share a bit of behind the scenes.

In February, in The BeforeTimes, Nicole, Chris, Matt, and I traveled to Portugal to meet with several footwear factories and hopefully find a good fit (lol). Portugal has a long shoemaking tradition and is well-known for excellent quality, particularly with leather goods.

We met with three shoe factories and learned a lot. It’s always fascinating to see into a working production facility and observe the many steps it takes to create just one pair of shoes. Factories can differ quite a lot, too – some have a lot of specialized machinery while others still do much of the work by hand.

These are leather cutting stamps for larger production runs.

Of course, it’s no secret that Europe has been shut down for most of 2020. In our little world this has caused delays with sampling and getting ready for our first order, but we have teamed up with a fantastic factory, and we’re so happy to present to you the first European-made American Duchess shoes:

Bernadette – Eyecatching Edwardian/1920s oxfords designed in collaboration with Bernadette Banner. These two-toned beauties have 2 inch French heels and come in five colorways, something for everyone!

Gibson – Our classic Edwardian/1920s teardrop tie design with 2 inch French heels. Now in four colors including oxblood red and green.

Tango – One of our vault styles, back by popular demand – the sexy lace-up Edwardian/1920s Tango boots with 3 inch French heels, available in black, red, green, and ocean blue.

Tango Boots in four gorgeous colors

The already infamous Bernadette Oxfords in five colors

Classic Gibsons – black, cognac, oxblood, and green available.

I’ve gotten quite a few questions from our European customers asking if shipping/customs will be easier when buying the new shoes made in Portugal. Currently we still have to import them to the United States and warehouse them here, but we are working towards a much better European fulfillment solution as fast as we can. We’re hoping to make this big improvement sometime next year, pending world events.

Thank you for coming on this journey with us through all of these years. It’s been quite a road, but we’re pretty stoked about this next move. We can offer more colors and sizes than ever before. We hope you like these changes as well!

Partial Shoe Team doing Shoe Things in Shoe Places

A wall of heels at our heel manufacturer – of course none of these are ours! We have to make all our heels custom because oldey-timey-curvy shapes aren’t en vogue.