French Sole first began life as a gleam of an idea when Jane Winkworth made her initial collections of bespoke ballet flats back in 1968, working with Gamba and Annello and Davide in London. Later in 1989 after a period as a trained restorer and painter of fine porcelain, Jane Winkworth started French Sole after a chance meeting with a shoe salesman from the French Hirica factory, called Philipe Cassalis.

Philipe, together with the factory he represented - who still today make the famous ballet flats that they first created back in 1950 - encouraged Jane to set up her business specializing in selling only ballet flats and loved her chosen name of French Sole.

The shoes were made using Jane's own materials, to her own designs and trimmed in the unusual contrasting colors, never before seen on ballet flats and under the label of her new name - French Sole.

From the humble beginnings in 1989 of a "tabletop" business selling only through Charity Fairs, Jane then started a Mail Order company from her Chelsea home and then followed the four central London based French Sole stores currently operating in Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Mayfair and Marylebone with a new Covent Garden store soon to open.

The rest is history ...French Sole's beautiful, award winning ballet flats and gorgeous sandals and boots are now the shoes of choice for the world's most stylish and glamorous women. The company prides itself on superb quality and craftsmanship to age old methods of manufacture, hand lasted by third generation shoemakers in two partner factories in France and Spain and using only the very finest of Italian leathers.

French Sole continues to be a hugely successful privately owned family business, dedicated and devoted to designing and producing the best of luxurious, exquisite, comfortable and affordable flat footwear for the most discerning and appreciative of fashionable women everywhere.