13/09/2016
This summer I happened up on a pair of Grenson “Masterpiece” brogues, well used and going for a song. The leather sole and heel were pretty worn down, but the careful owner had taken wonderful care of the upper, they were polished to a deep, gleaming lustre and looked pretty great. So, given my preference for some proper rubber under…
19/03/2016
I’m at the start of a series of posts about companies that for some reason or other interest me. Either due to unique products, some quirky aspect of their business, or because they have a background and history that is interesting. In the case of NPS Solovair, the interest starts with the company name. The NPS part dates all the…
17/03/2015
A while back I wrote a post about shoe soles, listing up the most important types and ranting a bit about ones I consider to be confusingly misnamed. One sole I decided not to include in that post were the ripple soles. Why? In my ignorance I considered it a bit of a novelty sole. In my defense it’s not one…
20/02/2015
A while back I posted about how I discovered that my classic Dr Martens shoes had developed split soles (read the original post here!). Although four or five years since I had purchased them, they had seen little use and I was very surprised to find that the soles, while displaying marginal wear elsewhere, had split along the sides, opening…
20/12/2014
Given my recent activism around the probably bicycle related wear on a pair of my tweed trousers, it may be a little early to go on another disappointed consumer rant. Or is it? Heck, we pay good money for our nice clothes and shoes, so isn’t it reasonable to find they live up to expectations, or even exceed them? Should we…
16/11/2014
In recent times I’ve had a couple of pairs of my quality shoes, the ones with Goodyear welted shoe soles, resoled. In the grand scheme of things makes me something of a know-it-all, with regards to what goes on on the underside of Gentleman’s footwear. First I found a pair of custom-grade Church brogues, which I then had resoled with Dainite soles, then…