Tag: Jeffery-West

Jeffery~West Rochester Timothy

Just over a year ago my friend Patrick introduced me to Jeffery~West, and these were the shoes I began to covet immediately. Unfortunately they were soon discontinued in this colour, and I wasn’t really interested in a black pair.

But thank goodness for Ebay, factory stock clearance and having small (for a man) feet! Thirteen months later, a pair of these beauties turned up in my size, and they’re winging their way to me as I type. Hopefully they’ll arrive next week.

This style, Rochester Timothy, are made on the same lasts as my red crocodile boots, and also made in Italy. Hopefully there’ll be a few days of fine weather when they arrive – I need to make absolutely certain that I wear them on dry pavements for a time or two, to make sure I don’t damage the toes!

Then I just need to find a black or grey suiting fabric with a purple pinstripe, so that I can make a lovely pair of trousers to go with them.

These boots weren’t made for walking.

At the end of December I received an email that I just couldn’t resist – a message about the Jeffery~West sale. I went to their website, just to have a look, you understand, and discovered that the Rochester Rafael boots were now half price. Even better – there were several colours left in my size! After much deliberation I decided that I couldn’t live without this fabulous red mock-croc pair.

They arrived really quickly, were a perfect fit, and I was thrilled to bits. I wore them once, took them off when I got home, turned them over to show the design on the sole to my husband… and was horrified to discover that they looked as though they were falling apart!

A worried email and a couple of phone calls to Jeffery~West later, and a lovely lady called Kirsty was able to reassure me that this is not the case.

I knew that the soles of these shoes were blake stitched rather than Goodyear welted, but I hadn’t realised what difference this type of construction would actually make. Because the soles are stitched directly to the uppers without a welt, you get a shallow channel around the very edge of the sole. To stitch the upper in place, the leather is cut with a knife and peeled back. Once the stitching is complete, the leather is pressed back into place. If the sole of the shoe gets damp, this channel can open up. Thankfully it can also be pressed back down again – and once I’d done that and worn the shoes a second time, you’d never know that this had happened.

What I will need to keep in mind is that these shoes won’t be as robust as my Sylvians, and I should probably save them for summer. I’d never go out in the rain in leather soled shoes anyway, but this is England, and sometimes you just can’t avoid walking on a wet pavement!

For anybody interested in the technical details of the differences between blake stitched and Goodyear welted shoes, W. Sanford (bespoke tailors and shoemakers in Shanghai) have a really interesting article, with diagrams. I’ll be studying this for future reference…

Butterick 5250

Butterick 5250

I started making these trousers back in March, when I started my new job. Then I decided I didn’t like them, and they went on The Pile. Last weekend I was going to a party, and I wanted to wear my Jeffery~West shoes, so I thought it was about time I finished off the trousers to go with them.

The trousers are Butterick 5250, view D, in a herringbone linen blend.

Now that I’ve made the sway-back adjustment, I really like them – although I did make them a little bit too small around the waist which is why the waistband’s gone wrinkly. I know it might look daft to be wearing trousers that sit so high on the waist, and there’s probably a “rule” somewhere that says short-waisted people shouldn’t wear high-waisted trousers. I say never mind the “rules”, they’re really comfortable, and I plan to make another pair. And a matching little bolero-type jacket to go with these.

I think the only thing I’d change about them is the pockets – they’re just not quite big enough. Also, whilst the trousers look nice enough with a fitted t-shirt, I think that what they really need is a shirt and tie to go with them. Maybe a bow tie. (Bow ties are cool.)

Rochester Rafael

Jeffery~West have done it again.

I only went to their website to see whether there was anything left in the sale that was a) in my size and b) purple. (Sadly not, on both counts.) And then I thought I’d just have a little look to see whether there was anything new… which is when I saw these.

The boots above are their Rochester Rafael style which I know my bad-influence-friend Patrick has been coveting for ages. They’re black patent leather with red “blood splatters”.

And now there is an internet-only limited edition version of the Rochester Rafael, in ten glorious new colours! I have to confess to being extraordinarily tempted by a gold pair, or maybe the metallic red ones.

Top row: Gold leather, Sliced black & red leather, Black & silver leather, Black patent with white splatters, Black leather with faint red glitter.
Bottom row: Red crocodile-effect leather, Dark green leather, Red metallic leather, Dark blue leather, Metallic blue leather.
All available online from Jeffery~West.

Jeffery West Sylvian Brogues.

Jeffery West

Yesterday I went into London, to visit the Foale & Tuffin exhibition at the Fashion & Textile Museum with a friend. Afterwards I had a few hours to spare until I was due to meet another friend for tea, so I’d planned to spend the afternoon looking at the Relics of Old London exhibition at the Royal Academy.

While I was in the area I thought I’d just have a little wander down Jermyn Street, to have a little look at some lovely shirts and shoes. From there I ended up in the Piccadilly Arcade, where I was ambushed by Jeffery West, whose shoes I wrote about a few weeks ago.

I asked the lovely salesman whether the shoes were ever made in a size 39 (a men’s size 5), and he said that they weren’t. Then, as every good salesman should, he suggested that I try on a size 6 and see what they were like. I agreed, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t fit, and I’d be able to leave the shop without buying an extraordinarily expensive pair of shoes.

The pair he brought out were the Sylvian plain front gibson winklepickers, in black. They were beautiful, but not what I wanted to buy, so I still felt relatively safe.

And then I put them on.

They’re so narrow and so pointy that once I’d put my orthotics inside they turned out to fit perfectly.

Oops.

The lovely salesman then checked on the computer, and discovered that he had one other pair of shoes in stock in a size 6. They were a customer order that had never been collected, due to the customer moving abroad. The design is an old one, so they’re no longer on the Jeffery West website, but just look at the picture above. I have to say that these are pretty much my perfect shoes!

The Gibson style is a much better fit for my peculiar feet than the usual Oxford. Beautiful brogue detailing, and they have the signature Jeffery West cleft heel. Despite the extreme pointiness, they’re wide enough to accommodate all of my toes (something that women’s shoes never quite seem to manage), and the colour and shine are just beautiful.

Even better, because these shoes are no longer part of the regular range, the lovely salesman was able to offer them to me for a substantial reduction in price!

And then he told me that after you’ve bought five pairs, you’re entitled to a lifetime discount.

Damn him.

Jeffery-West

My friend Patrick is a Very Bad Influence. We were talking about shoes, and he pointed me in the direction of Jeffery-West. Now we’re both coveting beautiful shoes that we can’t afford – and they aren’t even made in my size! (And I still haven’t saved up enough money to go on a shoemaking course.)

These shoes may be constructed in a traditional way, in Northampton, but their design is far from old-fashioned. The leathers are beautifully coloured and often extremely unusual – check out this “blood-spattered” patent chelsea boot. The attention to detail is very impressive. The soles and linings are red, the heels are cloven, the punching is all diamond-shaped, and the message hidden underneath the shoe pictured above is “decadence, sleaze & excess”. What more could you demand of your footwear than that?

You can, of course, buy your shoes online, but if you’re looking for decadence, sleaze and excess, you could do worse than pay a visit to one of their shops. The words “fabulous” and “gothic” spring to mind, with more than a little elegance and luxury thrown in for good measure.

This is a window display from the Jeffery-West shop in Piccadilly:

and if shoes alone aren’t enough, they also have a gorgeous range of belts, cufflinks, canes, umbrellas and wallets – all the essentials a modern dandy might need.

(Unless you’re a woman, with too-small feet. Sigh.)

All images © Jeffery-West.