Santoni's leather
All Santoni shoes are made from a very high-quality Pink leather, which is manually selected by founder Andrea Santoni. A Pink is another name for one-year-old calves. These calves are at the stage between calf and cow. The one-year-old calves whose leather is used graze in the Alps at an altitude of over 1,600 meters. The height at which the calves are selected is for a specific and important reason.
Within 24 hours, the temperature in the Alps can rise to 30 degrees in the afternoon and fall to -5 degrees at night. Due to this temperature difference, the skin develops into an enormous firm and strong structure, whereby the leather remains thin and supple enough to make extremely high-quality Santoni shoes. These attributes cannot be realized in any other way than by these continuous temperature differences.
Durable and responsible leather
The animals whose leather is used also get no supplementary food, they graze the alpine meadows and find grass, herbs and flowers there. Due to the lack of hormones that are processed in feed chunks, these animals do not get into a growth spurt. As a result, the grain of the leather remains nicely closed and the pores are miniscule. Moreover, this fully benefits animal welfare, which makes the leather that Santoni uses truly sustainable and responsible.
Strict requirements for the highest quality
Due to the lack of barbed wire and nasty insects, the skins of the calves are virtually undamaged. The lack of barbed wire and nasty insects is crucial for the quality of Santoni women's shoes and Santoni men's shoes. Minor inflammations can cause almost invisible damage to the leather. In most shoe factories damage is camouflaged by coatings. Santoni however, rejects these skins, only 10% of the skins offered pass the strict Santoni selection whereby the skins are selected manually and with a magnifying glass. Ultimately, only a narrow strip across the back of this Pink is used to make beautiful Santoni shoes, the rest is used for belts and bags.
Santoni's supplier of these very high-quality skins is the Italian company Bonaudo and from Germany the company Weinheimer.