The Greatest Luxury

I firmly believe that any man who pays attention to his dress should have his shirts made, and most men who wear tailored clothing should have that made as well. The selection is better, the fit is better, the quality is usually better, and the cost does not have to be more than he is already spending on ready to wear clothing. Bespoke shoes are different. If good quality ready to wear shoes fit a man’s foot, bespoke shoes may be purely a luxury. But oh, what a luxury.

There is no doubt that the differences between the finest machine-made shoes and made by hand bespoke shoes can be subtle. From six feet away, the bespoke shoe will look smaller, conforming as it does more closely to the foot in general and particularly around the instep, but there can be similarities in every other category but two. Bespoke and their less expensive brethren may look alike, particularly the standard designs, may be colored alike, especially if they are both black, and fit alike, though that last is the least likely as few men have two feet that are the same size. Where they are always different of course, is in the selection and the price. World class bespoke shoes rarely cost less than double the best of the machine-made. And instead of the limited range on sale at the local shoe emporium, literally anything that can be imagined can be, and often is, commissioned and made.

Those stylistic differences are usually relatively conservative – a plum colored lining perhaps, or the wearer’s initials nailed into the sole – but not always. Shoes made from exotic hides ranging from pigskin and antelope to crocodile and python are more common than one might expect, and more than one man has had a personal sigil punched into the toe of his brogues.

Nonetheless, with rarely in-your-face advantages and a fairly stiff cost, it is no wonder that the world’s great bespoke shoemakers of my acquaintance can be counted on the fingers and toes. Ignoring the sole practitioners who pop up and disappear, there are but a couple in Japan, one or two in America, perhaps three in England, a couple more in France and a few in Italy. But the fans of bespoke shoes, a group that includes royalty, captains of industry and ordinary men who happen to be clothing hobbyists, know that if they commission that pigskin slip-from a firm like London’s George J. Cleverley it will be light, comfortable, great looking and no-one else within a thousand miles is likely to be wearing an identical pair.