A Romanian shoemaker designs size 75 social distancing shoes
12 June 2020
Text:
Lucía de la Torre
A cobbler in Romania has created size 75 shoes to encourage people to follow good social distancing.
Grigore Lup, a leathersmith from the Transylvanian city of Cluj, has been making leather shoes for almost 40 years. His main clients are theatres, opera houses, and traditional folk dance ensembles, but when the pandemic hit and cultural events were cancelled, his business was hit too.
Frustrated by the many people not respecting social distancing rules, he put his lifetime of experience to use by making long-nosed size 75 shoes to encourage wearers to stand apart from each other.
“If two people wearing these shoes were facing each other, there would be almost one-and-a-half metres between them,” explained Lup.
Each pair of these quirky shoes requires one metre of leather and two days to make, and costs just more than £90.
