The London Lounge

Is anyone familiar with this bespoke bottier? His website samples look nice, but it would be nice to hear of anyone's experiences with him:

http://www.anthonydelos.com

The shoes look nice...
But the shoe trees...they are overkill.

I just called. 2000 euros for a pair of men's shoes including trees.

According to his site, M. Delos worked at JL Paris.

This sounds attractive.

RJman, I think that it's time for you take a little field trip to the various bespoke bottiers in Paris and publish a report on the lounge.

And, of course, since there is no substitute for direct experience, you must place an order with each, and post photo essays on the progress of your shoes.

I can't wait!

RJ,

I'll help organize the tour and introduce you to a good banker in town. From the list below you can get away with about 25,000 euros as long as you stick with stock leathers.

Which bottiers do you want to see? We have a presentation on the work of Dimitri Gomez. Do you want to see Corthay, Aubercy, JL Paris (there are already some notes on the site), Berluti (RJ you will have to take the lead on that one), Carmina (also does bespoke)...?

Cheers

Please let me know if you need a research assistant to help get the paper through peer review, journal publication, and all stages of the clinical trials.

Hartline wrote:Please let me know if you need a research assistant to help get the paper through peer review, journal publication, and all stages of the clinical trials.

Not to mention polishing said boots...

Michael:

Can the banker do any forex magic? Or some sort of Whitewater magic? I've been saving up for a down payment on some sort of dwelling once my exile in Freedom ends, but hey, you only live twice.

Gentlemen, two points:

1. Polishing is a true pleasure in which I like to indulge personally. If, however, fellow members would like to gather in our own version of the Sw*nn Club (the Bloch Club?)...

2. I will bend that rule if it is BYOB-S (Bring Your Own Billecart-Salmon (rose)).

Michael, do you know anything at all about Delos? It would be good to read a testimonial from someone.

Lastly, donations to a "Keep RJ shod" fund are being accepted. Donations in American cat litter are also accepted, as the French litiere agglomerante sucks.

An evening gathering polishing shoes is not a bad idea at all.

Berluti certainly knows how to do it right.

I just finished looking at the Berluti CD on proper polishng technique and in that they had a few takes from their polishing evening at The Ritz, Paris.

Cigars, champagne, evening dress, a fabulous meal and then on to the highlight of the evening - polishing.... perfect.

Only the French would know how to make shoes "groan with pleasure" as the video voice over seductively narrates.

Infact, I'm going to see if my shoes will speak to me right now....

Berluti gives out CDs on polishing now? A little infra dig. I think I got a CD when I purchased a racquetball paddle.

A friend took photos of a long and fascinating session w M. Delos this Saturday. He's a patient fellow and very knowledgeable. He and I are on. Further reports as events warrant. Reports that I asked him if he is of "Baronial" lineage are unsubstantiated.

Like an idiot I have not brought cameras with me to my two Delos fittings. However, I had my second fitting with him today at lunchtime, one of the hottest days of the year. I am so far very pleased with his services.

To take up where I left off, I saw M Delos roughly six weeks ago for a fitting on the shoes I ordered with him. At that time, he had produced a last for me and made a pair of shoes out of leather with a cork sole which were my try ons. As they were simple try-ons, he did not replicate the design I had ordered, which are butterfly-front loafers with stitched aprons, but simply made a sort of whole-cut slip-on. I tried on the shoes sitting and standing, and walked around with them on, including briefly on the sidewalk outside his store. He asked me for my impressions of the fit, and I gave them to him, such as fit around the heel, around my arches, and any areas of tightness. He then poked and pressed the shoe in order to make his own assessments of the fit. Then he took a special knife and, after removing the shoes from my feet, slashed open the shoes at their toes, heels and sides, then had me put them on again in order to see how they fit from inside. He did some indications with a pen on the inner sole to point out where my feet lay there. From these observations he did some additional work to the last, shaping it more in certain places to accomodate my apparently rather peculiar feet. He informed me he wished to make a second try-on pair since these are the first shoes he is making for me and they are loafers.

I received a call from Delos yesterday asking when I could come in for my second fitting as he leaves for vacation later this week. I popped out at lunch and hopped on the metro to his atelier, which is very picturesque. Hard by the Montmartre Cemetery, it's off Boulevard de Clichy with its tawdry sex shops in an area which instantly feels young and homey -- lots of little shops and restaurants, including some quite good Chinese. It's rather amazing, considering the slide into picturesque caricature of the Sacre-Coeur area near Montmartre, that the Lepic area is still nice. The shop itself smells wonderfully of leather and is a real workplace -- dozens of tools are lined up against the wall and all sorts of instruments are in back. At the second fitting, Delos had another leather and cork try-on which I.. tried on... while he checked it out (like last time) and his colleague M Boudoux looked on. He also had made the leather pattern for my shoe -- one was on the last, while the other was as yet unlasted. It's gorgeous, just about exactly what I wanted, particularly in toe shape and the shape of the lake. He took a few additional details like sole color and thickness and we wished each other good vacations.

rjman wrote:. . . he did not replicate the design I had ordered, which are butterfly-front loafers with stitched aprons. . .

I saw a pair like this made by Edward Green at the Flusser shop. It is a spectacular design and what I would order if I were to get bespoke loafers. The Flusser model had punching around the apron stitching, which I would urge you to consider if you haven’t already. It looked beautiful and not at all busy.


Your report is wonderful RJMan, and like Dr. Teplitz’s report, it is a depressing reminder of what an advantage Europe has over the U.S. in the bespoke field. Certainly, the traveling British shoemakers offer nothing in the way of fitting and precision as Mr. Delos, although it seems Lobb Paris can come close. We are o,k, on tailors, but have nothing in the way of trouser specialists like Ambrosi.

From what I hear (and have seen), we have one truly outstanding shirtmaker. But one does not make for a variety of options and there is no option if someone likes the handsewn aspects of some of the Italian makers (I don’t, but others do).

Dopey -

EG made a model called the Tewkesbury, which was a butterfly loafer with punched apron. (This is the classic butterfly loafer design also sold by Cleverley and at New & Lingwood, and is supposedly a Peal design.) For Flusser, as Susie mentioned to me and as cuffthis showed me in a wonderful old Flusser brochure, the punching went all around the butterfly design as well. However, I didn't want any punching and instead first placed a special order with Green for a Tewkesbury with the handstitched apron of the Dover. They attempted this... twice... before emailing me regretfully to say that they would not be able to make the shoe and that they henceforth would not be able to make pattern modifications to their shoes in special orders (I believe they've started instituting an additional surcharge for that).

I feel that the punching made a weird hybrid out of the loafer -- punching and broguing denote a shoe I'd wear with a coat, if not a suit, and I feel that a loafer needs to be much less formal.

Delos trained at Lobb Paris and indeed accompanied them on US visits when he was part of Lobb several years ago. I haven't heard many complaints about fit or quality from the Paul Davies, Cleverley, Gaziano or Lobb Paris customers on the boards so I imagine they all have their ways of making excellent shoes. In the States you do have Vaingauz and also Ercolino, not to mention the bespoke visits of the Lobbs, Gaziano, Cleverley, and Paul Davies, as well as bespoke available from Lattanzi and Berluti at their shops. Of course, all of those require a lot of waiting between bespoke visits. At any rate, Delos told me that he often will have just one fitting for a customer depending on the customer's foot and the design chosen. My choice of a moccasin complicated things as their fit is harder to get right. I know of one Cleverley customer who uses Green special order for his moccasin orders as he prefers working with Cleverley on shoes where the precise fit can be maintained.

rjman wrote:. . .I feel that the punching made a weird hybrid out of the loafer -- punching and broguing denote a shoe I'd wear with a coat, if not a suit, and I feel that a loafer needs to be much less formal.

I have the opposite view. I think the punching all around make the shoe less formal and I would not wear the punched version with a suit and probably not with all but the most casual of coat and tie. Without the punching, I would wear them with a jacket, but still not a suit.

In general, I only wear loafers with pretty casual coat and tie and not to the office. The elastic sided ones would be an exception, and some models seem perfectly fine with a suit as long as they don’t have too much gadgetry showing and the vamp closes high enough so the opening doesn’t really show. I don’t have any myself. The butterfly version, even though it closes a bit higher, is still too busy for my taste with a suit.

But that is just me. At this level of detail, I feel we are all playing only to the audience between our eyes. If you think of the brogueing as dressier, who am I to argue.

rjman wrote: Delos trained at Lobb Paris and indeed accompanied them on US visits when he was part of Lobb several years ago. I haven't heard many complaints about fit or quality from the Paul Davies, Cleverley, Gaziano or Lobb Paris customers on the boards so I imagine they all have their ways of making excellent shoes. In the States you do have Vaingauz and also Ercolino, not to mention the bespoke visits of the Lobbs, Gaziano, Cleverley, and Paul Davies, as well as bespoke available from Lattanzi and Berluti at their shops. Of course, all of those require a lot of waiting between bespoke visits. At any rate, Delos told me that he often will have just one fitting for a customer depending on the customer's foot and the design chosen. My choice of a moccasin complicated things as their fit is harder to get right. I know of one Cleverley customer who uses Green special order for his moccasin orders as he prefers working with Cleverley on shoes where the precise fit can be maintained.

All those makers are fine, and I wrote a fair bit here about my experience with Davies. But with the exception of Lobb Paris, none make a trial shoe and I doubt any would make two unless things were going dreadfully wrong. Having the craftsman and his tools local makes it much easier for him to spend the time getting things just right. My own experience, particularly with visiting tailors, is that the extra time and effort involved with transporting goods back and forth over the ocean (and often the delay in getting paid) creates subtle but powerful disincentives to go that very last inch or two. That applies for both the maker and the client. It is easier to let a small thing slide if it means a four month wait.

For shoes in the U.S., I believe Ercolino sends his shoes to London to be made, though he can probably make many adjustments here. Even with him, then, the opportunity to work local is not really the same as you have in Europe. I don’t know about Vainguiz.

I have to believe the extra service you get by being local results in a better fit. It certainly seems to make for a better experience, or it would for me.

Good luck on your shoes. It is a really beautiful design.