The Gentleman’s Corner has been a bit tardy this week, and it’s purely the fault of the lone contributor.  I decided to take 4 1/2 days summer holiday this year.  And am now back focusing on the launch of the shop and site for October.

But as I’ve been away, I’ve been daydreaming about socks.  Yes, socks.

Lodger has been working on the perfect sock for several months and we are quite proud of the end result.  We’ve teamed up with a small producer in Italy that makes some of the finest available.  After having personally tested every pair of premium socks on the market, I can tell you that I’m a bit (read that incredibly) disappointed at what £25 ($50) gets you.

For the Lodger socks, we’ve started with the yarn and the best thing for dress socks is still cotton.  But not just any cotton.  We only use cotton with the Italian trademark "Filoscozia", which has to go through some very special processes.  To get the whole story, you can take a look at the industry website:

http://www.filoscozia.it/inglese/engfilato.htm

The basic idea is that you have to start with the longest, best cotton fibers, comb and twist them in a certain way, run the yarn over an open flame to remove any stay fibers, put the yarns through a process called mercerization (which makes them stronger, smoother, and more absorbent), and only then can you knit or weave it into your chosen fabric.

The Lodger socks are light in weight, breath well, absorbent, and very comfortable.  But the most important test is that I’ve never once had to pull them up from around my ankles.  Even without any Lycra, they hug the calf without being too restrictive.

This might be more thought than you’ve ever given to your humble hosiery, but we think the perfect shoes should have the right accoutrements.

The Lodger shop was supposed to open on the 15th of September 2008.  Just in time for London Fashion Week.  Not that we were planning on dipping our toes into the temporal world of seasonal collections and fleeting parties, but it would have been nice to open the doors while the world’s press was in town. 

But with our builder walking out on the job 3 days prior to starting the fit out, and a two week scramble to find someone to step in, we’re now looking at the mid to late October. 

Sometimes, however, these things work out for the best.  Our new builder appears to very good, with a resume including Rolls Royce, among others.  And they are almost as anal on the excel as I am.  A very good sign.

It has also given our architects a little bit more time to refine the design.  The custom chairs have been ordered, as have the giant polished concrete floor tiles.  But it’s the folded steel staircase I’m most excited about. 

Finished a deep bronze colour with a leather runner, this is going to be the heart of the space.  Of course it means completely removing the floor, putting in new structural beams, and then installing a new wall so that the stairs appear to float on their own.  But this is a small price to pay for a thing of beauty. 

As the works progress I will be posting photos of the job.  For now, here is a sneak peek at the design of the ground floor and a computer rendered drawing of the stairs.  Cross your fingers for us. 

Things have been a little erratic with the postings on Gentleman’s Corner, but we have a good explanation.  Last week we hosted our first international event in Beirut, Lebanon.

20 new clients joined us for a day of laser fitting and custom shoe design.  For the event, we offered custom versions of all three collections, our classic English, modern English, and Italian.  In the end Italy took the gold medal for orders placed, with classic English a close silver. 

Prior to our launch in October (more on that in the next post) we plan to have a few more events in cities around the world.  Prospects include Washington DC, Dubai, Boston, Cairo, and San Francisco. 

To register your interest in one of these cities, or to propose another, please send an email to info@lodgerfootwear.com.  Based on the success of the first event, we are looking forward to making these events a regular occurrence. 

"A girl went back to Napoli, because she missed the scenery. . ."

It had been a while since I’d visited our Italian factory and seeing Naples in the summertime put Clooney’s rendition of "Mambo Italiano" on repeat as the mental soundtrack to my 36 hour trip. 

Starting with the factory, we finalized our first shoe of the month, a beautiful one-piece construction that my designer Annejkh won’t allow me to show until the proper launch.  It’s in a deep, deep midnight blue and is one of the finest examples of shoemaking I’ve seen in a long time. 

From there, it was a cross country trip for a meeting on the Lodger leather goods collection that is coming a few months after launch.  We have been working on an overnight / work bag that is beautiful, simple, and functional.  It sounds simple, but I still haven’t found the perfect item.  So Lodger will make it. 

No photos of the work in progress, but here’s a shot of Napoli by our photographer Martin. 

It’s an obvious question that I’ve been asked by a few people and haven’t yet mentioned in this space.  "Why is this blog called the Gentleman’s Corner?"  and "What does it mean?". 

In classic shoemaking, a Gentleman’s Corner is where the shoemaker cuts the point off of the inside of the heel.  This creates a small triangle at the corner of the heel, the Gentleman’s Corner.  Historically this was done so that the heel of a shoe wouldn’t catch on the hem of a man’s trousers and rip out the seam.  Today it’s largely decorative. 

At Lodger we decided that our shop should have an area where our customers and friends can relax with a coffee or a whiskey and chat about the things that are on their minds.  Business, sports, fashion, shoes.  And we came up with a name for the area that was just a little too clever, the Gentleman’s Corner.  For the Lodger website, that idea sounded an awful lot like a blog.  Although the conversation, up to this point, is more a one way commentary than a two way discussion, we’re hoping that will change once we move into our new home. 

Oh, and here are three examples of Lodger’s Gentleman’s Corners off our English Casual, English Dress, and Italian Dress collections.  A couple images are of prototypes, rather than finished shoes, but you’ll get the idea. 

The final installment in an ongoing conversation about the steps in making a pair of Lodger shoes. 

Finishing

Another illustrative name, the process of finishing puts the final touches on the shoe.  The upper of the shoe is shined, waxed, antiqued, or otherwise treated to give the shoe a distinct and beautiful appearance.  The sole is hand painted and intricate emboss patterns are made using a wheel heated over an open flame. 

In England we focus on bringing out the natural and subtle tones in a leather that is coloured during the tanning process.  A shoe that starts out a generic brown becomes deeper, or richer, or redder, depending on the whim of the finisher.  And it’s his prowess that pulls together all of the 200 steps that went before it. 

In Italy we take the finishing to an even higher level, hand colouring each and every shoe (aside from black).  The shoes are made using an unfinished tan leather which provides the perfect base for the colour to come. 

The finisher layers different colours over the top of each other to create the deep and complex colours found in our Italian range.  A brown shoe might have tan, black, and red layered among the brown tones to give the finished shoe an even deeper patina.  Of course the soles are hand painted as well and then everything is again given a final polish by a pair of stout fingers.  Making sure that your pair has a flawless finish. 

This brief series was meant to give you a quick overview as to how a pair of Lodger shoes are crafted.  To find out more just drop us a line at info@lodgerfootwear.com or come visit us at our shop when we launch in September.