The London Lounge

I was in Tokyo last week, and had occassion to visit at the Otsuka store just last week...

They make shoes by appointment of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan. And also make shoes for regular people...

The shoes are available as bespoke, handmade MTM, regular MTM, and RTW.

The bespoke shoes are a sight. Heart stopping beautiful!...some of the most beautiful shoes I have seen...fine stitching, very nice last, and exquisite bootcut sole with the most gorgeous fiddleback.

They showed me a pair made for His Highness...black plain captoe, which I guestimate to be no larger than a regular 6D, exquisitely made, beautiful in every way - workmanship, elegance of the last...as wonderful as any shoe I have ever seen. It took my breath away...momentarily...and I forgot to take a picture of it.

The bespoke service costs Y315k (about US$2900)...of course totally all handmade.

Seen here the master cordswainer...no young chap, this man



The lasts...



I couldn't find any for myself...typical problem in Japan for those wearing 9.5 and larger shoes...I couldn't fit anything in the huge Isetan Shinjuku (I frantically tried to find a pair from the Roberto Ugolini for Vass there, but the extremely well-informed, English speaking sales lady could not find me a pair. She offered to do bespoke for me, and invited me to be measured by Roberto himself, when he is in Japan in Sept) nor the smaller Trading Post (where they have the very beautiful Guild of Crafts shoes - MTM or bespoke. Even the Guild of Crafts designed last made by Crockett and Jones were too small for me. )

The largest Otsuka had in stock was 9EE...The regular RTW shoes are very ordinary - no excitement. I would estimate no better than a Loake. They have two MTM ranges of the same quality shoes, but measured for size and a plus/minus technique on the existing last - a cheaper one on Goodyear welts, and another handmade. These raised my pressure somewhat...beautifully made!

An example is the quite popular in the MTM is the machine made button boots...which I examined, and found to be quite excellent. Perhaps Happy Stroller may be interested in a pair...only Y75k, or about US$680 for the goodyear welter, and Y175k, or about US$1.6k for the hand welted.

This is the machine welted example...which I examined and found to be quite good.I would roughly place this about the same level as JL Paris or EG.






If you can read Japanese, this page shows their handwork

http://www.rakuten.co.jp/otsuka/687328/701681

Wow, thank you for sharing this, sir. Brief but very informative.
Mark

Don't let Sator see those button boots! Nice.

dont worry he knows about them as i have seen him post them on another thread

Thanks for sharing one of my favorite shoemakers. I happen to have the pair of shoes from the attached pictures. I purchased by online order and have been wearing them very often ,even in the middle of hot summer in Seoul. The pair successfully delivers great combination of "Classic" and "Trendiness",when i wear with casual attires. Surely i did enjoy wearing them with classic flannel suits in winter times. The prices were about 75,000Yen(approximatelyUSD600) and i had to wait for more than 2 months.

Dear Toomanypleats...can you please show us some pictures of your shoes? Would love to see how they age. I was told, but cannot confirm this, that the leather used by Japanese shoemakers are lower quality than those used by Europeans.