Repetto's Japan operator brings bespoke, France-made shoemaking to Kyoto Takashimaya
LOOK Holdings is running Repetto's made-to-order atelier at Kyoto Takashimaya through September 23 — a three-and-a-half month wait and an ¥85,800 floor price, in exchange for a pair built to order in France.
LOOK Holdings, which brings Repetto to Japan, is running a made-to-order shoemaking event called Atelier Repetto at Kyoto Takashimaya from September 9 to 23, the company announced. Customers choose from around 100 combinations of materials, colours and heel heights, and the shoes are then handmade at Repetto's own atelier in France's Dordogne region.
Women's styles start at ¥85,800 (tax included), in sizes 22.0–26.7cm, though some designs limit the available materials or sizes, according to the release. Delivery takes roughly three and a half months. Each pair carries a discreet gold 'R' stamped on the heel and a personalised line of text on the insole; reservations and inquiries go through the Kyoto Takashimaya store directly.
Repetto traces its shoemaking back to 1947, when Rose Repetto designed dance shoes on the advice of her son, the choreographer Roland Petit — a lineage the release also credits with the later fame of the ballet flat, after Brigitte Bardot asked for a pair of her own. The company frames the Kyoto event as an extension of that ballet-shoe craftsmanship rather than a footwear collection in the usual sense.
A three-and-a-half-month wait and an ¥85,800 floor price make this a small-volume proposition even by department-store standards, but that is closer to the point than a flaw. A made-to-order atelier staffed out of a specialist corner, rather than the regular shoe department, is exactly the kind of high-touch, slow-moving activation Japanese department stores use to justify floor space to a patient, affluent customer — the opposite of the volume game the food halls downstairs are built for.