One of my friends has a theory that it is the bottom of a well made men’s shoe that shows the quality of the purchase. He believes that the detail on the waist and the fully leather sole reveals more to the average eye than the finely buffed uppers.

As a result, he likes to sit with his legs crossed and one sole showing whenever he can. This has the added benefit of revealing that he has thought about the colour of his socks too. He tends to do this more around female company too, but I’m not sure his results are quantifiable.

I find the whole thing a bit ridiculous. I am not self conscious enough to change the way I sit just to show off the bottom of my shoes in the hope that someone will notice them. Plus, I’ve always found that people notice good shoes from the uppers if they are polished well.

But the beggar got me thinking about the soles of my shoes. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be changing my gait to avoid marking my soles at all. However, I am getting a little obsessed about the waist of my shoes (the bit that angles down from the top of the heel stack to the point where the sole begins to touch the floor).

My friend advised me to clean the waist and even to polish it every so often. On a few pairs of my shoes, there is an interesting design element on the waist. Be that a different colour of leather or hand bunking by a fancy wheel. So I could see a benefit to the twisted logic of polishing the underside of a pair of shoes.

But this advice has helped speed up my rapid descent into obsessive polishing. It has also changed the way that I walk up and down stairs. I am worried about scuffing the waist, so I end up trying to place my whole foot on a step or just enough of the toe and ball of my foot to avoid the waist.

As a result, I look like I have never encountered a staircase before. My friend’s obsession with the soles of his shoes is designed to attract conversation. My manifestation of the obsession means that people avoid me because I look mentally ill when I enter a subway station.

Like the lead singer of Ride listening to Lush’s Spooky on loop, Clement has been doing a lot of shoegazing recently. Why? Because Luke wasn’t happy with the explanation he received for squishy bits coming out of the heel stacks on his Italian shoes.

Clement’s theory was that the problem was pressure related, but Luke disagreed. To avoid a Lodger/Gentleman’s Corner ruckus, I stepped in to mediate.

“If you look at the picture, none of the leather strips look compressed, which they would be if the problem was pressure related,” said Luke. “Additionally, why would the damage appear at the bottom rather than the middle (or top) considering the force from both ends is equal?”

He also maintained that water damage was to blame.

Cue Clement staring at shoes for longer than is healthy. After much chin scratching, he had a new theory. He suggests that the average gait pulls the layers of leather in the heel stack in opposite directions. This is because most people strike the ground with the outside back of their shoe.

As the foot passes through the walking motion, the heel stack is subjected to different forces. And as the back of the heel is curved and not straight like the sides, it is here that it is easier for the layers of the stack to become slightly unstuck.

“As a tiny gap between the rubber quarter and the leather is created, the infiltration of rain makes the leather softer and slightly damp,” says Clement. “That is why you can see all of these fibers sticking out.”

So, Luke was right all along. Or was he? Before he gets too smug, Clement conceded that the Italian manufacturers will probably have a different explanation for the damage. It looks like there is no right or wrong answer, but I have asked Lodger to inquire at the Italian factory.

In the meantime, if you are suffering from the same problem, simply trim the fibers with a sharp blade, sand softly and polish liberally.

Tariq and I recently made another visit to Northampton’s footwear museum archive. It’s one of our favourite sources for vintage detailing and constructions. Amongst the hundreds of catalogued pieces of footwear are shelves of shoe paraphernalia: boxes, trees, lasts, polishes and brushes, and intriguingly labelled, ‘concealed shoes.’

I’d not explored this particular branch of the collection before and asked Rebecca, the curator, to explain the pieces to me. She opened the lids to various boxes to reveal rather dusty, and in some cases dishevelled pieces of ancient footwear. The shoes had been found hidden inside buildings. Some had been discovered in cavities over doorways, others up chimneys, and one teeny pair from inside a thatched roof.  The buildings they came from varied from cottages, manor houses and even Hampton Court Palace, to factories, hospitals and schools.

It seems that the concealing of shoes was a superstition believed to bring the building and its inhabitants good luck. The shoe, as the only piece of clothing to retain the form of the owner, was believed to also retain his spirit. Many of the shoes were from children, believed to be pure and thus able to counter evil spirits. Placing shoes in wall cavities at ‘weak points’ was believed to strengthen the spirit of the building. Shoes placed high up in rafters and chimneys prevented evil from entering the dwelling at the highest point, believed to also be the most susceptible to bad spirits.

The degree of superstition and emotion attached to footwear is great. We tie old shoes to the back of wedding cars for luck, should apparently never put shoes on tables (especially new shoes) and believe old horse shoes to be lucky. I have the left shoe from my first ever pair; my Granny far away in New Zealand has the right half of the pair. For some reason these little shoes have been kept and cared for whilst dresses, coats and jumpers were handed on and discarded.

Whilst the practice of concealing shoes within buildings has pretty much died out, we still hinge much importance on our footwear. Above and beyond their practicality, we often judge others by the state of their shoes. A favourite pair is lovingly re-polished and re-soled rather than simply discarded or replaced.

At Lodger we try to cultivate the relationship between wearer and footwear. From guided selection and advice from Clement, through care and cleaning tips, to our resoling service. We are fond of each and every pair that leaves the store and hope that our clients develop the same emotional attachment to them as we have!

A couple of weeks ago, Luke emailed me with a curious problem. He had noticed that all of his Italian shoes were developing the same problem: some inner workings of the heel stack were squishing their way out of the back of his shoes.

“My theory is that it is water related,” he said. “The damage appears at the bottom and back of the heel (where it gets wettest) and it feels like warped and/or rotten wood. My guess is that it is a manufacturing issue in Italy – a place where they get much less rain.”
I sprung into action and asked Luke to send me some photos of the damage. He promptly obliged and, somewhat humourously, provided me with some extra detail. First, he revealed that he hadn’t worn either shoe more than 25 times. It was more like 15. Luke then backed this up by saying that he first wore them on May 12, 2009.

When I asked him how he could be so specific, he jokingly (I think) referred to his shoe diary. And my friends are accusing me of being a bit geeky about shoes!

I promised Luke that I would ask around to try and find the cause of the problem and a solution. Clement and Nathan at Lodger were more than happy to help. After a thorough inspection of the photos and a debate in the office, they presented me with their theory.

1. The leather used in Italian heels is softer than the leather used in English heels.
2. The rubber quarters are denser than the leather.
3. The person wearing them is an aggressive walker who strikes the heel hard.

So Luke’s water and wood theory wasn’t backed up, but it could still be a contributing factor. Nathan, however, believes that it is more likely that it is a combination of the three factors above that causes the problem. It is this that makes the leather compress and squeeze out the bottom of the stack, on top of the dense rubber.

As a result, there is little that can be done to prevent the problem on the shoe. The best way to deal with it once it is evident was concisely summed up by Clement:

“Cut it with a sharp blade, then gently sand it and polish,” he said. “Or walk slowly…”

Being on the young side, I have only just begun to enjoy the pleasures of growing with my clothes, rather than growing out of them. Well I haven’t grown much for quite a few years, but the few great pieces I was smart enough to invest in while in still in high school are just now beginning to come into their own. For the first time I am actually seeing the distinct results achieved when you buy quality and allow it to just get better with time.

For my eighteenth birthday I was given a tobacco leather weekend bag, and while it looked fantastic and felt supple right from the shop, carrying it felt a bit precious. The first scuff was painful, and when someone accidentally stepped on it in an airport waiting area I almost had a fit.  Now, a few years down the line, the leather has a fantastic texture and depth of colour, and I hate to say it, but I almost look forward to each new scuff.

While I certainly wouldn’t want any of my jackets getting scuffs and snags, they do fit better after a little wear and tear. This has held especially true for a slightly eccentric, unlined, purple pinwale corduroy jacket I wear every chance I get. Although it fit just fine off the rack, the shoulders have become more natural and the three-roll-two lapel now rolls in just the right place every time. Such a vibrant jacket could easily wear me instead of the other way around, but with such a naturally worn-in fit, this isn’t a problem at all.

Over time, whether a coat, bag, or anything else, these things become more your own with each use. Each crease, each small stain is a reminder of the product being lived in, not put on a pedestal for mere admiring from a distance.  If only I could say from experience the same thing about that pair of oxblood wholecuts…

Stephen Pulvirent

I’ve never owned a pair of desert boots. This is principally because I used to perceive them as trainer replacements for men in their thirties. You know, for when you just want to be comfortable, but it is harder to ignore a nagging wife than a casual girlfriend.

Don’t get me wrong, I think they are a stylish, classic design. And I am rapidly approaching the territory described above. For a long time I have been debating which colour to go for when I finally buy a pair.

The origins of desert boots can be traced back to 1949 when Nathan Clark created the Clarks Original version with pattern cutter Bill Tuxhill. He had been inspired by officers in the Eighth Army he met in Burma. They wore rough suede boots with crepe soles that they commissioned at the Old Bazaar in Cairo.

It is believed that the design is based on the Dutch voortrekker boot worn by the South African section of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert. The strong military connection to the boot is the reason for another of its lasting appeals: durability. The crepe sole may be flexible and light, but it is designed for miles of marching on uncertain terrain. The grip is excellent too.

It is highly probable that the initial designs were also based on chukka boots (or turf boots). These calfskin or suede boots for polo were popular after World War II and, although they are tighter at the ankle and have leather soles, the similarities are plain to see.

Surprisingly, Clark’s desert boot first had success in France and Italy, but it wasn’t long before the UK cottoned on. And only a year after the first designs of the two-piece upper, two-hole lace-up design, the boot was showcased at the Chicago Shoe Fair in 1950. (On a side note, does the Shoe Fair still exist? Anyone in Chicago out there?)

In the following years, the desert boot gained popular appeal. Bob Dylan wore them, The Beatles did too (before they rejigged the Chelsea boot and Steve McQueen sported a pair in The Great Escape.

But it wasn’t just music and movie icons that wore them. In 1967, Lord Shackleton, deputy leader of the House of Lords, popularised desert boots in Government after he returned from Aden with a pair he had commissioned.

Sixty years on and the desert boot is as popular as ever. I may not be 30 yet, but because of this article, I will definitely be getting a pair soon. Just two words did it for me: Bob Dylan.