Albert Escribano, co-founder of shoe and accessory brand Hereu, inspects a row of shelves filled with dusty leather loafers, T-bar sandals and canvas boots. Each is a footnote to a decade of designing and making in Spain. ‘Ten years? That feels a little bit unreal because Hereu started as a personal project,’ he says. ‘We wanted to bring the passion we have for craftmanship together with our own taste to make our thing.’
The ‘we’ Escribano refers to is himself and José Luis Bartolomé. When the idea for Hereu (which translates to ‘heir‘ in Catalan) came to them in 2014, Bartolomé was living in Paris and Escribano in London. The pair – who used to be a couple in life before business – didn’t have any plans for their first collection beyond seeing it as a way of holding onto their roots. Travelling to Spain also became a reason for them to see each other more.
