G
Griffindork
Guest
“I couldn’t dare talk about clothes with the outside world, because I would be looked upon as being way too self-conscious and self-absorbed.” - Marc Grayson, dandyism.net.
It’s almost as unseemly to talk about money as it is to talk about clothes. Some of us have made so much revenue from our styleforum-affiliated businesses that we can basically order anything without regard to price. But my application for affiliate status hangs in limbo due to some unfortunate liberties taken with sonic variations on the term “Fok”, leaving me of more humble means, and therefore I have to pay attention to price. Luckily for me, John Lobb St. James (JLSJ from here on out) lists its prices on its website. This is nice and saves me from wasting time on an item priced at a point with which I’m not comfortable. Wouldn’t it be nice if more makers did the same (Footnote 1)? For those interested, price seems like an essential piece of the equation, and here it is on the JLSJ website right at your fingertips, without having that awkward conversation and before you book an appointment:
https://www.johnlobbltd.co.uk/pricelist/
Note: this is the abbreviated price list as indicated. Perhaps you seek elephant wholecuts? Unfortunately you still have to ask and the previous paragraph is even more of a waste of your valuable time than all the other paragraphs. For that I apologize sincerely.
The JLSJ website also contains quite a bit of other information, such as pictures of shoes from a black and white catalog that appears to be roughly 70 years old.
https://www.johnlobbltd.co.uk/black-white-catalogue/
This type of catalog, perhaps more than anything else on the JLSJ website, should tell us something. What kind of brand still markets off a catalog that predates the internet? A message, perhaps, to those seeking the razor sharp angles of those beautiful Fukuda models, and the speed-racer bestetti supercars: BEWARE OF DOG.
The website also describes the process of shoemaking at JLSJ, with lots of charming details, including a description of “the socket” and “the rough stuff cutter” and all sorts of others things that would sound like they could make for a pretty wild Friday night if I didn’t know it was a shoe website.
Finally, and perhaps most helpfully, there are some pictures of actual shoes under what I thought was the misnomer “Shop”, as the various links that permit no shopping. But I suppose perhaps that I was virtually being let into the shop and so it was not such a misnomer after all. And it was there that I started to find a few things that looked not just like shoes, but shoes that I might like. Maybe not sleek or showy, but certainly not shapeless.
I swear it was a good hour among those pages, clicking, going back, linking forward, re-reading, boning up. And it was pleasant. Just the tiniest bit of internet research and I felt like I was ready to carry on.
And what of the great bespeakers of the past? Did our forefathers research, or somehow come about their wardrobes as if struck by divine inspiration? Is it the case that Gianni Agnelli received style like Moses receiving the commandments on the mountain, while Gianni Cerruti endlessly listens to holy silence? These questions and more bubbled through my mind as I made my way to my pre-ordained appointment.
(To be continued).
Footnote 1: I must stop here to note that more factual information is not an unmitigated positive. For example, one unfortunate side effect is that more accurate information from a maker reduces the amount of mindless quibbling styleforum posters can do over objective facts. And who doesn’t enjoy watching mental midgets mud wrestle over nonsense? By way of illustration, I decided to randomly select one styleforum member’s posts, take out the tedious, asinine arguments with other posters, and see what was left. Purely by chance, the name I pulled out of the hat was: dieworkwear. And so, of his roughly 11,000 posts, the breakdown is as follows:
Mental midget mud wrestling with other members: 8,100:
Copy/Paste of/links to Vox/Corbera posts pre-2011: 1500
Responses to Spoopoker gifs, which are funny, with his own gif that really doesn’t make any sense in the context of the thread: 900
Announcements of Mr. Porter sales:250 (310, including announcements of further reductions)
Cries for Help: 180
Pictures of various bespoke items ordered by other people and posted Instagram: 136
It’s almost as unseemly to talk about money as it is to talk about clothes. Some of us have made so much revenue from our styleforum-affiliated businesses that we can basically order anything without regard to price. But my application for affiliate status hangs in limbo due to some unfortunate liberties taken with sonic variations on the term “Fok”, leaving me of more humble means, and therefore I have to pay attention to price. Luckily for me, John Lobb St. James (JLSJ from here on out) lists its prices on its website. This is nice and saves me from wasting time on an item priced at a point with which I’m not comfortable. Wouldn’t it be nice if more makers did the same (Footnote 1)? For those interested, price seems like an essential piece of the equation, and here it is on the JLSJ website right at your fingertips, without having that awkward conversation and before you book an appointment:
https://www.johnlobbltd.co.uk/pricelist/
Note: this is the abbreviated price list as indicated. Perhaps you seek elephant wholecuts? Unfortunately you still have to ask and the previous paragraph is even more of a waste of your valuable time than all the other paragraphs. For that I apologize sincerely.
The JLSJ website also contains quite a bit of other information, such as pictures of shoes from a black and white catalog that appears to be roughly 70 years old.
https://www.johnlobbltd.co.uk/black-white-catalogue/
This type of catalog, perhaps more than anything else on the JLSJ website, should tell us something. What kind of brand still markets off a catalog that predates the internet? A message, perhaps, to those seeking the razor sharp angles of those beautiful Fukuda models, and the speed-racer bestetti supercars: BEWARE OF DOG.
The website also describes the process of shoemaking at JLSJ, with lots of charming details, including a description of “the socket” and “the rough stuff cutter” and all sorts of others things that would sound like they could make for a pretty wild Friday night if I didn’t know it was a shoe website.
Finally, and perhaps most helpfully, there are some pictures of actual shoes under what I thought was the misnomer “Shop”, as the various links that permit no shopping. But I suppose perhaps that I was virtually being let into the shop and so it was not such a misnomer after all. And it was there that I started to find a few things that looked not just like shoes, but shoes that I might like. Maybe not sleek or showy, but certainly not shapeless.
I swear it was a good hour among those pages, clicking, going back, linking forward, re-reading, boning up. And it was pleasant. Just the tiniest bit of internet research and I felt like I was ready to carry on.
And what of the great bespeakers of the past? Did our forefathers research, or somehow come about their wardrobes as if struck by divine inspiration? Is it the case that Gianni Agnelli received style like Moses receiving the commandments on the mountain, while Gianni Cerruti endlessly listens to holy silence? These questions and more bubbled through my mind as I made my way to my pre-ordained appointment.
(To be continued).
Footnote 1: I must stop here to note that more factual information is not an unmitigated positive. For example, one unfortunate side effect is that more accurate information from a maker reduces the amount of mindless quibbling styleforum posters can do over objective facts. And who doesn’t enjoy watching mental midgets mud wrestle over nonsense? By way of illustration, I decided to randomly select one styleforum member’s posts, take out the tedious, asinine arguments with other posters, and see what was left. Purely by chance, the name I pulled out of the hat was: dieworkwear. And so, of his roughly 11,000 posts, the breakdown is as follows:
Mental midget mud wrestling with other members: 8,100:
Copy/Paste of/links to Vox/Corbera posts pre-2011: 1500
Responses to Spoopoker gifs, which are funny, with his own gif that really doesn’t make any sense in the context of the thread: 900
Announcements of Mr. Porter sales:250 (310, including announcements of further reductions)
Cries for Help: 180
Pictures of various bespoke items ordered by other people and posted Instagram: 136
