Every shoe you have ever owned started life as one of eleven.
Eleven base patterns. That is the whole vocabulary of footwear design, according to the Northampton Shoe Museum. Up for debate, of course, but we're inclined to agree. The eleven patterns exist because they answer practical questions. How the foot goes in? How it stays on? What keeps out the rain? How the shoe holds up when it is worked hard? Every variation since sits on top of one of them.
The 11 base shoe patterns on display at the Northampton Shoe Museum.
Crown Northampton has always taken the minimal approach. Chris, our pattern cutter and owner, sees it as our job to present the leather as it deserves. When you spend two years developing a colour with a tannery, or work with a shell that has been pit-tanned for six months, the shoe should let the leather stand front and centre. That is the position we work from.
Where this changes is when a design comes to us with an original behind it. Then our job is to preserve it.
The German Army Trainer is one of those.
The German Army Trainer
The story of the GAT starts in West Germany in the late 1970s, when the Bundeswehr, the West German armed forces, needed a training shoe for half a million soldiers. Its official name was the Bundeswehr Sportschuhe, or Federal Defence Sports Shoe. Adidas got the contract, though the exact story of whether Puma had a hand in the original design is still argued over.
Every feature of the original was designed to solve a problem. The white leather upper was easy to keep clean. The grey suede on the toe box was there to reinforce the shoe where soldiers wore through them fastest. The extra stitched leather panel on the side was structural, holding the whole shoe together under repeated indoor drills. The gum rubber sole did not mark gymnasium floors. There were no logos, because it was a government-issued shoe.
None of these decisions were made for style. And yet the result was a shoe that became one of the most influential utilitarian designs in modern footwear. Once the Cold War ended and the surplus stores of Berlin filled with ex-army pairs, they started turning up on the feet of fashion designers, art students, and considered dressers across Europe.
Martin Margiela made his own version in 1998. Since then, it has become one of the most copied silhouettes in modern footwear. We have been making our own take for nearly five years.
Underneath all the trimming though, the GAT is one of the eleven. It is a wholecut, the same pattern that runs through all of Crown's collections. The extra layers and trims are what make it a GAT, but the bones are the same as those of a plain wholecut.
An example of the original German Army Trainer (Bundeswehr) from the 1970s. The silhouette that's been copied ever since.
From the Adnitt to the Yardley
The Adnitt GAT is the version we have been making in our Jazz Collection, and it has been a good shoe. Most of us in the office own a pair, and quite a lot of us wear them every day. But over the years, requests kept coming in for two things: a Lactae Hevea sole in place of the Vibram, and various custom material choices we could not quite offer within the Jazz format.
At some point last year, a team conversation turned the question around. Rather than tinker with the Adnitt, what if we made a hand stitch version of the GAT from the ground up? A whole new shoe, made to the standard of our Harlestone, built around what people had been asking for.
That is how the Yardley GAT started. We worked the requests through on the workshop floor, and came out with a shoe built to be the finest cup sole GAT we could put our hands to. Anything less was not worth doing. As usual at Crown, that means going to extremes on the materials and the pattern work.
The Adnitt GAT, our signature sneaker from the Jazz Collection, next to the Yardley GAT.
The Crown Northampton Yardley GAT
The Yardley GAT is close to the original in every way that counts. The pattern, the silhouette, the honest utility of the design. What is not the same is the budget. Where the Bundeswehr was making shoes to outfit half a million soldiers, we are making them one pair at a time, to the standard Northampton has always been known for, and then a little more.
Materials chosen for comfort, durability, and character.
The Upper.
The GAT's design asks for more than one layer of leather in places, so we selected two thin leathers with the durability that only comes from a tight fibre structure. Full grain, tanned in ways that keep the fibres closed rather than opening them out.
Shinki Shell Cordovan for the accent panels and trim. Shinki is the thinner and softer of the two Cordovans we work with, which makes it ideal for layering on top of another leather. There is no other leather on earth with a fibre structure so dense that it cannot crease.
Veg tan baby calf for the main upper. The finest and most natural white calf we have, and the same leather we have used for years on our best-selling Harlestone Hand Stitch. Vegetable tanned leather is a natural product, which means it can never be pure white. Just as well, because the natural Lactae Hevea sole cannot be pure white either.
The Sole.
Lactae Hevea - milk from the Hevea tree, hand poured into a mould and baked for weeks to take the shape it needs. That is the only way to produce the feel underfoot, which is soft, cushioned, and not achievable in any other way.
The Lining.
Luxury veg tan calf, the leather traditionally used in the finest bespoke shoes. We chose to cut it as one continuous piece around your foot, so there is only one join inside the shoe. leather that moulds to your foot as it wears.
The patina is yours
We love the patina that only comes with these raw materials, tanned slowly to keep their fibre structure intact. Every roll, every crease, every mark of a day worn hard, is yours. The shoe becomes your own over time, and that is how it should be.
Once your order is placed, the shoes pass from one maker's hands to the next. Then they are yours. What is personal at the workshop becomes personal at your feet.
A luxury sneaker that ages together
Cordovan is a rare and characterful leather. Combined with veg tan baby calf and a natural Lactae Hevea sole, every part of the Yardley GAT will age. The three materials patina in different ways, at different rates, together on the same pair.
The original GAT came with a gum sole. We make the Yardley to your taste, in Gum, Off-White, or Black.
The Yardley GAT look
The original GAT was white with grey suede overlays and a gum sole. We chose to start the Yardley off with our own contrast, one that will change with wear. The vegetable tan calf and the Shinki Cordovan begin as very different colours. Over time, as both patinate, they move closer together in tone.
Shinki Cordovan is naturally vibrant, so we could not resist using it for the French binding that finishes the shoe. Every French binding on every Yardley will be hand folded, one by one, by our most experienced machinist. That said, the French binding depends on the size of the shell, so we can only go so far with it before we run out of leather.
The fit
The Yardley is built on the same last as our Harlestone Hand Stitch, which is designed to fit more like a dress shoe than a sneaker.
Because the materials are the same as the finest bespoke shoes, they mould to your foot as you wear them in. The upper softens, the lining takes the shape of your foot, and the oak bark structure underneath, along with the cork and leather beneath it, settles around you. What starts as a well-made shoe becomes a shoe made for you.
Every pair takes time to craft. That is the trade-off, and it is one we lean into. Because we make to order, we can also make to your unique measurements. Which is how Crown has always worked. Chris's great grandfather ran a shop a hundred years ago that offered exactly this kind of service to the people of Northampton. Direct to the wearer, one pair at a time.
Combined, all of this would push the Yardley well over £1000 in a shop. Selling direct is how we can offer it at the price we do. Along with a few other benefits worth reading about below:
Blog: 10 years of direct to consumer
Northampton's military past
The Yardley GAT is named after Yardley Chase, a wartime military site in Northamptonshire that has been an unseen part of the local landscape for decades.
In 1942, the Ministry of Defence took over a corner of the Earl of Northampton's estate at Castle Ashby and built a 600-acre ordnance depot for bombs and missiles. 36 bunkers were laid out across the site, connected by railway lines, and manned by the Royal Pioneer Corps, based at Simpson Barracks just south of Northampton. On the wooden battens inside those bunkers, you can still find the engraved names of the soldiers who worked there, mostly from 1944.
Yardley Chase is one of many pieces of Northamptonshire's military history that shaped the town for over a century. The Northamptonshire Regiment itself served the British Army continuously from 1881 to 1960. Their collection now sits at Abington Park Museum, a short walk from our factory.
Yardley Chase woodland (top) and one of the 36 abandoned bunkers used by the military (bottom). A fitting name for our new sneaker.
The name Yardley felt right. A shoe with military origins made in a town with its own military history.
