Featured on our O.A.O. (One And Only) Oxfords, is a hand stacked leather heel. What’s in a heel? It turns out, quite a bit.
Many modern and reproduction shoes that appear to have stacked heels are very often just a thin layer of leather or vinyl printed or cut from strips to fake the appearance of a stacked heel. Underneath this wrapping is a carved wooden heel. It looks decent enough when new, but as soon as you knick the heel with normal wear, the block of wood underneath is exposed.
On the other hand, O.A.O oxfords boast hand carved leather sheets, which are created from many stacked up layers of leather, then sanded down to a nice smooth finish. After being sanded they are dyed to match the uppers and attached. This construction method is true to the original service shoes.
When creating our shoes, we spent quite a bit of time to determine the heel height and composition to closely match original WWII Women’s Service Shoes. Knowing that often times heel height listed within military regulations could vary based on where the author of the regulation measured the heel height on the shoe, we opted to match the height of our shoes as closely as possible to the multiple pairs of named, dated, and stamped originals within our personal collections. As with all manufacturing minor differences did occur throughout the war and even now in our modern reproductions, however we are quite proud to produce a true and faithful private purchase style black oxford that can be used for WWII Navy impressions.
We have created our O.A.O. oxfords to not only have the authentic look you want, but also durability and comfort you will need and love for years to come.