Brantano Footwear

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Brantano Footwear began with André Brantegem’s Belgian shoe-manufacturing business in 1953. In 1962, a retail outlet at the family factory in Lede, East Flanders, set the company on a different path: less workshop dust, more rows of shoe boxes. Brantano developed into a family-oriented footwear retailer, selling shoes for women, men and children through large-format stores.

The chain expanded beyond Belgium and Luxembourg, including a major British operation created in 1998 when Brantano acquired 47 Shoe City stores. By the mid-2000s, the group had also operated in the Netherlands, Denmark and France, while franchised stores carried the name in parts of the Middle East. Dutch retailer Macintosh Retail Group acquired Brantano in 2007.

The corporate story grew increasingly tangled at the checkout. Macintosh’s 2015 bankruptcy led to new ownership arrangements, and FNG acquired the Belgian Brantano business in 2016. The UK subsidiary, sold separately to Alteri Investors in 2015, entered administration again in March 2017; its stores ceased trading that May. In Belgium, Brantano N.V. was among FNG-linked companies declared bankrupt in August 2020.

Our Brantano Footwear collection celebrates the out-of-town shoe-store era: family fittings, school-shoe missions, shelf after shelf of boxes, and the eternal search for the other size 39.