Today's Shoes

Alden long wing bluchers in dark tan alpine grain calfskin with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last) -- a LeatherSoul special makeup and a recreation of a classic American shoe.

Today's Shoes

Alden long-wing bluchers in dark tan alpine grain calfskin with reverse welting and double leather soles (Barrie last).

Today's Shoes

Now that the complete shoe inventory is once again available, I was able to wear my Alden long wing bluchers in English tan pebble grain calf with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last) -- one of Alden's special makeups for LeatherSoul in Hawaii.

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati split-toe monkstrap in caramel-colored Radica 03 calfskin with a combination leather/rubber sole (17194, 697 last). There are two different types of buckles used on monkstrap shoes. The first is like the buckle on a standard rubber belt, where the strap goes through the buckle once and then through a leather keeper. With the second, the strap comes up through the buckle, around a center bar, and back through the buckle -- in effect, the buckle is its own keeper. I like the second style better than the first because they are easier to buckle: getting the strap through that little leather keeper can be a pain in the butt sometimes.

Evening

Alden long wing bluchers in dark tan grained calfskin with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last). A special make-up for Tom Park of LeatherSoul in Hawaii.

Today's Shoes

Morning

Moreschi penny driving mocs in dark brown suede with brown leather penny strap and trim. These shoes were a special order. I would have preferred them to be all suede, but Moreschi doesn't offer that option. They do, however, make an excellent driving moc -- better than Tod's, and cheaper, too.

Day

Alden long wing bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan with reverse welting and double leather soles (model 975, Barrie last).

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati punch-cap bal high-lace boots in dark brown calfskin with single leather soles (10278, 683 last). I was in Harold's in the Heights on Saturday, discussing shoes with Johnny Mykof and Jim Pierce. One of the things that came up was the problem with cap-toes. A lot of men look at them and try them on, Johnny said, but they can frequently be a difficult sell. That's because the toe cap can bind the top of the foot when the foot is flexed, making them less comfortable than plain-toes or wingtips. American shoemakers tend to solve this problem by making toe caps shallow so that they don't come far enough up the vamp of the shoe to come into play when the foot flexes. The problem with this solution is aesthetics: they look stubby and ugly. The Italians elongate the toe cap to make it aesthetically pleasing, but they can have comfort problems. You pay your money and you take your chances. As for me, the elongated Italian-style toe cap doesn't particularly bother me, but I would never put one on a pair of shoes that I intended to do a lot of walking in.

Evening

Alden long wings in dark tan pebble-grain leather with reverse welting and a double leather sole (Barrie last). Man, I love these shoes. Tom (Park of LeatherSoul in Hawaii), please use more of this leather in your make-ups.

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati side-buckle monkstraps in dark brown (01) Radica calf with single leather soles (16042, 433 last).

Evening

Alden long wing bluchers in dark tan Alpine grained calfskin with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last). You will recall that these were special-order make-ups for LeatherSoul Hawaii. It appears that Tom Park at LeatherSoul has done well with these: only the small sizes remain. I'm glad to see that so many people have good taste.

Today's Shoes

Alden long wing bluchers in tan small-scale Scotch-grain calfskin (Alden calls it alpine) with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last). A week can't go by without me wearing one of my two pairs of long wings. The criticism that I usually make of Alden is that their lasts lack elegance or aesthetic appeal. It's true: compare a shoe made on Alden's Aberdeen last (the sleekest of all of their lasts) to one made on Edward Green's 82, and you will be struck by how brutal the Alden shoe looks. Of all the Alden lasts, Barrie is the most brutal-looking, and I have always hated to see good-looking models made up on Barrie. Over time, though, my opinion has softened somewhat. Barrie is relatively flat across the vamp, and the walls and toe slope steeply up to that plateau. In some respects, it resembles classic central European-style lasts like Vass's Budapest, although the walls aren't perpendicular to the sole and the toe isn't slightly upturned. So I guess that it's appropriate for shoes that are similar to central European-style shoes in scale, and the Alden long wing is nothing if not a shoe on a scale similar to most central European shoes. I continue not to like to see Barrie used for things like the split-toe blucher (Aberdeen works so much better) and the chukka (Plaza would be better on that, as well), but I can appreciate the style it brings to the table on a shoe like the long wing.

Today's Shoes

Day

Alden long wing bluchers in tan Scotch grain calf with a reverse welt and double leather soles (LeatherSoul special edition model, Barrie last). Much as I like these shoes (and I do like these shoes very much), I am forced to the conclusion that they are really only suited for flannels and jeans. They just are too large and clunky to work on ordinary wool trousers.

Evening

Gravati three-eyelet half brogue bluchers with modified U-shaped throat in antiqued tan calfskin with combination leather/rubber soles (16407, 640 last).

Today's Shoes

Alden long wing bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan with a reverse welt and double leather soles (975 model, Barrie last). Still some heel slippage, but they're beautiful shoes. The creases across the vamps are beginning to get the characteristic shell cordovan lightening.

Today's Shoes

Alden long wing bluchers in dark tan pebble grain calfskin (Alden calls it Alpine brown calf) with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last). I know that I wore these only last Tuesday; but they're new, I like them, and I wanted to see how they would go with jeans. They go very well. They also do very well for tromping around Houston looking for @#$%ing temporary tattoos, but that's another story.

Today's Shoes

Day

Alden long wing bluchers in a beautiful small-grained British tan calfskin (Alden calls it Alpine brown) with a reverse welt and double leather soles (Barrie last). A Long wing in tan Scotch grain calf is one of the classic American shoes, and yet it just isn't seen anymore. You can easily find the shoe in Color #8 shell cordovan, black or burgundy smooth leather, and even black Scotch grain, but until Tom Park at LeatherSoul Hawaii decided to order a special run of these shoes from Alden, you couldn't find it in tan Scotch grain. It's a great shoe. Despite being the same size and on the same last with the same trim as the Color #8 long wings that I wore yesterday, it seems less massive; but it's still a very substantial shoe. One of the nice things about Scotch grain leather is that the peaks and valleys provide a variegated color, which gives additional visual interest to the shoe.

Evening

Alden cap-toe blucher in medium brown calfskin with double leather soles (model 972, Aberdeen last).

Today's Shoes

Day

Alden long wing bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan with an extended split reverse welt on double leather soles (model 975, Barrie last). Back in the '50s and '60s, if an American man wore a suit with any regularity, he probably had a pair of wingtips; and if he had a pair of wingtips, chances are that they were long wings of a design very similar to these. They're called long wings because instead of the wings curving down to the welt about halfway down the shoe, they continue all the way to the heel. You'll notice that these are derivative of the wholecut blucher with the facings laid on and, like the wings, extended all the way to the heel. I don't know if this design originated in the United States, but I have never seen any European maker produce something like it. But every American maker, current, defunct, or otherwise, has it in their catalogue. The most commonly-seen incarnation of it from its heyday forty or fifty years ago was made by Florsheim. It was part of Florsheim's Imperial line of shoes, which for many Americans represented the ne plus ultra of men's shoes. The soles were all leather, of course, stained to look like wood. There were nails at the waist of the shoe and in double rows all around the all-leather heels. There was no rubber tip in the heel; instead, there was a triangular steel cleat on the outside edge. Shell cordovan was used, but so were grained calfs, in particular black and tan. I don't remember anything else about the shoes that my father wore when I was a kid except that he had a pair of Florsheim long wings in black grained calf (they called it cashmere calf). Those were some shoes.

So are these. They have rubber dovetails instead of the triangular steel cleat; but otherwise, they are the same: big and thick and heavy, and they could double as home defense devices when not on your feet. It's not an accident that they're made on the Barrie last, which is Alden's biggest, clunkiest last. They just wouldn't look right on anything more shapely. In a fit of nostalgia for my father's shoes, I bought these last week from Tom Park at LeatherSoul Hawaii. Nostalgia aside, these are growing on me. Not every shoe needs to be super-sleek.

Incidentally, this shoe is experiencing something of a renaissance recently. You may know that Brooks Brothers hired Thom Browne to design their new Black Fleece line. Browne likes '60s throw-back garments (shrunk to minuscule proportions), and nothing is more appropriate to wear with a '60s throwback gray flannel suit than long wings in shell cordovan. And Browne offers those in the Black Fleece line, too -- made by Alden, exactly like my 975s only with a signature cloth pull tab at the heel. Oh, and Brooks Brothers wants $280 more per pair than Tom Park charges for regular old 975s. Thom Browne can keep his stupid pull tab.

Evening

Alden saddle oxford in Color #8 shell cordovan with single leather soles (model 994, Barrie last). Yet another classic American shoe. You sometimes also see this with a burgundy vamp and quarter and a black saddle.