Have you ever found yourself uncomfortable in a buying situation because you weren’t familiar with the industry jargon? It’s one part frustrating, one part embarrassing, and one part nerve-wracking, isn’t it?

Anytime you spend good money on something, you should have a base line knowledge of how it works. This is why we bring car-savvy friends with us to the dealership, and it’s why we take tailors’ advice on what can and cannot be altered.

You need to arm yourself with the information to make the best decisions for your needs and your budget. What follows is a term-by-term breakdown of the most common words used in shoemaking.

Anatomy Of A Dress Shoe

There are many parts to a shoe. We’ll explain each part in alphabetical order below the graphic.

For the purposes of this article, we focused on a blucher. This is because it’s the style in which it’s easiest to recognize the various sections of a shoe.

There are certain parts of shoes that are not present on a blucher and we’ll provide one-off explanations below.