Packing your shoes with newspaper is a well known life hack; it allows them to hold their shape and it minimises odours. And if your shoes should get soaked, stuffing them with newspaper helps to dry them out. Owing to their character and knowing they were acquired at an outdoor market, you might believe that they are some kind of antique, scrunched up newspaper and all. Yet you’d be deceived, for these shoes are a modern bastardisation of period styles, rendered in a synthetic, plastic-leather imitation.