John Lobb Appreciation Thread

HRoi said:

how fitting that the company that supplies the raw material for our addiction is named Crack

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JermynStreet said:

DWF-any insight on how seamless wholecuts are made? Any pictures of Lobb's wholecuts that you know of or can post?

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DWFII said:

Lots of effort and a large piece of leather.

It's essentially a problem in blocking...which most shoemakers don't do a lot of...or lasting. But I am somewhat well known for doing full wellingtons (with real bona fide shoe leather not garment or upholstery leather) and the whole concept sparked my imagination some time back.

The leather in the following photo is a veg retan which means that it is a little firmer and a little less stretchy than a chrome tan (what most dress shoes are made of today).



From here it's simply cut the topline and facings edge, bind or bead, line and last.

The only seam would be the inseam.

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DWFII said:

Lots of effort and a large piece of leather.

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bengal-stripe said:

Here in a photo-essay is Daniel (“The talented Mr W.”) of Gaziano-Girlling, showing in detail how a seamless shoe is blocked/lasted:

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...girling-bespoke-4-the-unique-lasting-process/

While the front of the seamless shoe is not different to any other shoe, the difficulty is in the heel area which, initially, has huge folds of excess leather.

These folds have to be re-distributed several times into smaller and smaller folds until the leather, once it has dried, lies tightly over the heel,.

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DWFII said:

Looks like Russia Calf (hatch grain).

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bengal-stripe said:

Here in a photo-essay is Daniel (“The talented Mr W.”) of Gaziano-Girlling, showing in detail how a seamless shoe is blocked/lasted:

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...girling-bespoke-4-the-unique-lasting-process/

While the front of the seamless shoe is not different to any other shoe, the difficulty is in the heel area which, initially, has huge folds of excess leather.

These folds have to be re-distributed several times into smaller and smaller folds until the leather, once it has dried, lies tightly over the heel,.


Here are all the parts of the photo-essay, showing the work on this particular pair from initial consultation to finished product:

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...rtisans/gaziano-girling-1-designing-the-shoe/

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...sans/gaziano-girling-bespoke-2-the-measuring/

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...gaziano-girling-bespoke-3-the-making-process/

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...girling-bespoke-4-the-unique-lasting-process/

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...tisans/gaziano-girling-bespoke-5-the-fitting/

http://therakeonline.com/atelier-lu...artisans/final-gaziano-girling-slip-on-shoes/

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JermynStreet said:

Excellent resource. Thank you again, DWF and Bengal!!!

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DWFII said:

gegarrenton said:

Pretty simple. This thread is about Lobb appreciation. There are a jillion other threads discussing the merits of gemming, there is absolutely no reason to turn this thread into yet another quagmire about it and drown out all the Lobb stuff. Period.

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You mean "pull your head out of the sand."

I repeat...for those who didn't catch it first time around...I didn't raise the issue, I just answered the questions that were posed.

Now if you can get everyone in this thread to talk about shines and lines, and the merits of boxes, there'd be no need to worry. Nothing of substance would crop up and you could go back to cooing over your shoes.

And BTW...with respect to Lobbs...I regard John Lobb, St. James St. as one of, if not the premium maker of men's dress shoes in the world. And John Hunter Lobb--the president of Lobbs on St James--has said "we have turned our backs to the machine."

I believe that includes Goodyear machines.

And, AFAIK, if you're not talking about Lobbs on St. James, you're talking about Hermes.

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DWFII said:

JermynStreet said:

You are a tome of knowledge. Thank you very much for the info. Very cool/ good info. I really am not a fan of suede but I thought this could be an interesting discussion. Closer to the point of this thread-do you know if Rtw Lobb uses full grain suede or not? Any idea on Alden? Thanks again, sir.

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No problem.

No idea.

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MoneyWellSpent said:

This may be a good place to pose a question about the construction of John Lobb's RTW shoes. I am pasting a video below showing the cork bottom filling process of a pair of Lobbs. Watch the video and you will see that they seem to put an enormous amount of cork in the shoe, leaving a mound that is nowhere near flush with the welting as you see with all other goodyear welted shoes. Am I missing something, or do Lobbs somehow have a thicker cork layer?

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gegarrenton said:

The last page has been a great diversion, we can keep going with that!

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DWFII said:

The shoes are Goodyear welted with gemming. They have to fill that cavity to prevent the gemming from collapsing. Are they using more cork than other GY makers? I doubt it. They are anticipating some compression and collapse of the cork as the solvent evaporates and pressure is brought to bear by wearing. The cork is always going to be fugitive to one degree or the other.
It's all a great...and interesting and even enlightening...diversion if you have an open mind about these things. Conversation never follows a straight path.

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Butler said:

Medium brown repello calf brogue "single in the waist" oxford caps JL bespoke St. James's

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