Today's Shoes

Alden five-eyelet demi-chasses with twin-needle stitching forming the faux apron and toe seams in Color #8 shell cordovan with double leather soles (2210, Aberdeen last).

Today's Shoes

Alden five-eyelet bluchers with twin-needle stitching on the apron and toe in Color #8 shell cordovan with double leather soles (model 2210, Aberdeen last).

Today's Shoes

Alden five-eyelet blucher with twin-needle apron and toe stitching in Color #8 shell cordovan with double leather soles (model 2210, Aberdeen last).

Today's Shoes

Alden Norwegian split-toe bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan with double leather soles (model 2210, Aberdeen last). Alden also makes this shoe on the Barrie last, and for the life of me, I can't understand it. Barrie is flat on the top, with relatively high walls. That means that the apron stitching is bunched to the edge of the top, and the toe stitching pretty much just goes straight down. In other words, making this model on Barrie makes the hand stitching less prominent, which makes no sense to me when the hand stitching is one of the principal features of the shoe.

Today's Shoes

Day

Alden split-toe blucher in Color #8 shell cordovan with double leather soles (model 2210, Aberdeen last). Alden also makes this same model on Barrie last; and for the life of me, I can't understand why. Aberdeen is so much more shapely and attractive, and it fits better, too.

Evening

Gravati cap-toe blucher in navy blue Lama calf with single leather soles (15537, 640 last).

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

Alden split-toe bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan with double leather soles (model 2210, Aberdeen last). There are four canonical American styles of lace-up shoes: the wholecut plain-toe blucher, the long wingtip blucher, the saddle bal, and the Norwegian split-toe blucher. This is not to say that these styles necessarily originated in the United States (although some of them might have), just that they were popularized here and that there was a time when every American shoe manufacturer had all four models, and all four were among their top sellers. The highest expression of all of these styles was in Color #8 (deep burgundy) shell cordovan. Alas, all decent American shoe manufacturers except for Alden and Allen-Edmonds have either shut down or moved production overseas and are now selling a sadly diminished product. And Allen-Edmonds has lamentably retired some of these models (the saddle bal and the Norwegian split-toe) in favor of trendy-wannabe new designs. Alden not only still makes all four; they still make all four in shell cordovan.

Shell cordovan cannot be stretched over the last like calfskin can be. Consequently, shoes made from shell cordovan tend to fit slightly more loosely than shoes made from calfskin in the same size on the same last. The result of this is that even though Aberdeen is Alden's narrowest last, these shoes are still a bit loose in the heel. They're killer, though, in a good old fuddy-duddy American way.

Today's Shoes

Alden split-toe bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan (2210, Aberdeen last). The split-toe blucher is one of Alden's canonical shoes (although I think that Nettleton invented the style rather than Alden), and in shell cordovan, it's a legitimate classic. The picture and my shoes are from the Alden Shop in San Francisco, whose proprietor, Alan White, is another of the good guys in the shoe business. I saw this same model in whiskey shell cordovan at the Alden Shop on Madison Avenue in New York this past March, and it was a fantastic shoe. Unfortunately, they did not have it in my size; and they said that they had been waiting two years for fill-ins. Whiskey shell cordovan is not very common, you see.

Today's Shoes

Day

Stuart's Choice plain-toe bals with a floating toe medallion, a heart-shaped throat, and a vamp/quarter seam that intersects with the heel counter to echo the shape of the throat. The color name for these was dark khaki, for some reason, even though they really are dark brown. These shoes, like a lot of what Paul Stuart does, are interesting and unique. I have never seen anything quite like them before, and I don't think that I ever will (unless I do something bespoke). The Stuart's Choice shoes are made by Grenson, another Northampton shoe manufacturer that has always played second fiddle to its bigger and better-reputed neighbors. They can, however, make very good shoes, as illustrated by the Stuart's Choice line.

Evening

Alden cap-toe blucher in walnut calf (972, Aberdeen last). Another of my earliest pairs of "good" shoes. These, like the suede wingtips from yesterday, suffer from the heels being a bit too wide. Nevertheless, when I got these out this afternoon for the first time in two years or more, I was surprised by how much wear they have gotten and how nice they still look.