If you want to combine bespoke with elegance, comfort and style, look no further than legendary French shoemaker Berluti, whose latest ranges appeal to the fashionista as much as to the oligarch
Berluti, the Paris-based bespoke cobbler, is renowned for its beautifully fitting boots: over the past century it has gained an unparalleled knowledge of the various shapes and traumas of the human foot.
It’s perhaps less known for being at the pinnacle of fashion, being rather more loungelizard than fashionista in profile, but the latest family figurehead of the firm (which is now owned by luxury megalith LVMH), Olga Berluti, is determined to change that.
Thus the launch of three new collections: the Embroidered, Desir, and Burnt Leather ranges. Embroidered seems destined to appeal to the foppish, with intricate seamwork (all handmade, naturellement) and a trademark patina that Berluti calls ‘impertinent’ and you or I might describe as ‘the Berluti shine’.
Desir, aimed at those who combine sipping Krug at the Sass Café in Monaco with strenuous activities like, erm, walking up Casino Hill to where they parked their Lamborghini, are more durable than a typical Berluti boot, and still very light, thanks to the leathers used therein. And this is where vegetarians might wish to turn the page, for all are made from calves, albeit calves fed, we are assured, on a 100 per cent vegetarian diet (so that’s alright then). Berluti is famous for its fussiness about its hides: bits of hide with mosquito bite marks or scratches are haughtily rejected.
Burnt Leather is just that, using scorched hides to create a directional ‘cowboy’ look, which will go down well at Nikki Beach.
And if you want any of these in time for next summer’s posing season, you’d better get ordering. All Berluti’s bespoke shoes are handmade for each individual customer’s carefully measured feet, through a 250-stage process that takes six months and incorporates decades of wisdom from countless orthopaedic surgeons – who are among the rarefied stratum of society that can afford them. – Charles Anderson