Or you could just buy a pair of normal shoes/boots with replaceable soles and a durable leather upper. They will outlast those bobos, and look better too.
For a long time, I bought Red Wing shoes for just that reason. The stores can replace the soles for you as needed, and they come in wide sizes too.

I want these really badly - it\'s such a pain to get shoes my size (size 18 uk - 19 us).. then the cost of repairing the ones I have is too high.. need need need!

Yeah - it\'s not a workable idea, well it is - sort of - because there is what I call, \"A cascading chain of failure\"(c).
In that in the peak wear zones i.e. \"The Toes\" - all the little bits can be patched, but in the overall sense, as the peak wear areas, wear fast, but, in the overall all sense, the areas of medium wear - wear at half the rate of the peak area, which translates into for every 3 or 4 to patches you do - the rest of the shoe has worn and rotted away - and undergoes catastrophic failure....
Just like patching jeans - by the time you have done the knees 2 or 3 times, the crutch splits, the waist starts to separate from the legs, and the zipper has given up...
And it gets harder and harder to put new cloth onto worn and rotted cloth. The older the shoes get, the ,ore the fabric will have worn and rotted - over all.
And canvas shoes - indeed most shoes tend to fail in bits, with the rest of the shoe not far behind.
So granted that you can actually get a lot of mileage from decent shoes, and there is merrit in resoling GOOD quality leather shoes - I actually think if this idea is to get any practical traction, I\'d be going for replaceable uppers and soles, with repairable uppers.
That is practical.
Using the patching as the main selling point however - will be a cause of marketing failure.

So it\'s a crap quality shoe that will cost a lot, but be simple to patch up for a while or for the very determined it will end up as more patch than original.
Whatever happened to just making high quality products designed to last forever and rarely if ever need repaired, and should they need repair they are simple to repair?
Look at home appliances made in the 1950\'s. Almost all of them were built to last. Cast iron, steel, chrome plating, thick Bakelite. My folks have a 50+ year old waffle iron that\'s still working perfectly. My grandparents had an Amana freezer in their basement that was old when they bought their house almost 70 years ago and was still working when they died and we sold the property. (Couldn\'t get it out after the basement stairways\' brick walls were covered with paneling.) It was never turned off except for power failures. It was built like a vault with all sides and the door at least 8\" thick. The outside was white painted steel. The inside was galvanized steel and thick slabs of Bakelite, all held together with lots of screws. I bet it didn\'t use any more electricity than a new freezer with the same interior volume.
I\'d like to see articles about new appliances built to last 100+ years, handed down from generation to generation. Build it once and it\'s greener than an appliance designed to fall apart and use nearly as much energy to recycle as it took to manufacture the first time.
A waffle iron has to use a certain amount of energy to cook a waffle, no way around it. Same with any cooking appliances, the laws of physics dictate how much energy it takes to heat a specific mass of food to the right temperature.

Oh Mr Stiffy, my shoes wear out bottom first, after four years, $69.00 USD Merrells acceptable time for me, the tops look good because I maintain them, no cloth, dead cow uppers, sigh, why patch 4 year old shoes, I have two pairs of Merrells that are eight years old, the tops are bitchin\' the soles are like walking on ice when wet

I love this line: \"gradually personalizing the shoes\' appearance as time passes.\"
That explains all the dents and scratches in my neighbor\'s car... it\'s been personalized!!

Great Idea,
I hate having to throw out a pair of shoes just after I get them to fit and smell the way I like. Now only if they cam in steel toes as well...

Seeing these shoes leaves me almost speachless, however they do look like a \"Tribute\" to Manolo Blahnik. Which brings to mind some other concepts.
1) Buy some shoes & throw them away, cut holes in the lid, tape the lid down, and wear the box.
2) Find two roadkill critters, soak their hides in some realy strong tea for a long time. Put your feet in some tar & then wrap the hides around them.
3) Macrame some shoes out of discarded rope or old underwear & weave strips of tin can through the bottoms for durability.
4) Do any of the above and apply for a grant: www nea gov Use the grant money to buy some shoes.

As others have mentioned, leather is virtualy indestructible, but only if you remember to use shoepolish or wax/grease once or twice a month. I have these Swedish army surpluse boots made in the seventies out of 3 mm thick bovine leather that look almost new compared to some one year old canvas or even leather shoes people wear today. I just have the soles changed by a proffesional every five years or so for a third of the price of a new pair of boots. I just cant find shoes today with that kind of thick quality leather anymore.
But I do like the idea of just changing the soles yourself as if it was a bit of Lego though...

Just buy Court Classic shoes at Costco for $15.00 a pair. They look good, wear great, clean up OK, and at that price are disposable to boot (no pun intended).