OLD RECORDING: In the fashionable shopping district
near St James's Palace stands one
of London's most exclusive shoe shops.
Mr Eric Lobb supplies boots and shoes to many famous people.
His grandfather founded the business in the gold rush days,
by making miners' boots with a
special heel that concealed the gold.
Autograph hunters would be interested in this book.
Here are the pencilled outlines of Gordon Harker's feet.
And on the other pages are many more footprints of the famous.
See for yourself some of the famous
people whose feet have been carved in wood by the last-maker.
I think if the original John Lobb were to walk in today,
he would be very at home with what's going on here.
Many things have changed,
but when it comes to having a
conversation with him about shoemaking,
I think we would find a lot in common.
And I would certainly have a lot to learn from him.
HE LAUGHS
Jonathan is the fifth generation of Lobbs to follow in the family
footsteps, and splits his day between workbench and desk.
He starts each morning crafting wooden lasts.
The precise sculptures of the customer's feet,
which a bespoke shoe is built on.
I need a measurement that says 9 5/8ths,
and at the moment I've got just over 9 3/4.
Even just removing 1/8th of an inch can involve taking off quite a
lot of the actual volume of the last.
You've got to take it off in the right place.
I'm working to the principle that's grown up over a
period of hundreds of years,
with conditions that have been tried and tested.
If you do something outside those parameters,
you simply end up having a shoe that doesn't fit properly.
Jonathan is just one of a team of seven last-makers,
including some of the longest serving staff members,
Michael and Neil.
I pretty much wanted to be a carpenter.
That's what my mind-set was.
Mr Lobb suggested I do last-making if I was interested in wood
and carpentry. It was a part of the trade I didn't even know existed.
I was smitten by it. I didn't think I'd be here for more than a year or
two. It's been 34 years now. So, that was a shock to the system.
I started off at a shoemaking college in Hackney,
and I was there for three years.
Then I just walked into the store, asked for a job, saw John Lobb
and I started about a month later.
Mike and I have seen more of each other over the years
than we have of our partners, which is a bit scary.
But we come in here every day,
we sit on the same stools. We go through the same actions,
the same motions. But everything is very different.
Although it looks the same, but what's going on in our head and
what we're creating is different every day.
It's not an exact science, it's a craft.
We've all got our own individual style.
We can walk down into the last racks,
and there's over 15,000 lasts down there.
And I can pick out Michael's, and he can pick out mine because we
all know our individual style of last-making.
It's always nice to get a difficult foot.
When you get a difficult foot it's a joy,
because you're using all your skills.
So, it's not all repetition.
We also get customers bringing in
their sons to buy their first pair of shoes for them.
And the greatest one I heard was a customer said to his
son, "Son, welcome to your most expensive hobby ever."
We're not far off now.
It's just nice being around quality shoes.
I haven't bought a pair of shoes in the shop...
..maybe in 30 years now.
You wear shoes here.
And we all went out one time to watch a game of football
and at half-time we were all playing football in our Lobb shoes.
Outrageous. It's just a pair of shoes for us now.
When you're doing something which is inherently peaceful,
then your mind thinks about problems that you're trying to resolve and
what happens when you take away all
the distractions and things come into mind.
Put yourself in a quiet room and just see what happens.
See what pops into your head.
From making the last, to final polish,
a pair of bespoke shoes passes through the hands of seven skilled
artisans. Each focusing on just one part of the process.
And a meticulous process demands a hefty price tag.
Over £4,000 for a pair of leather Oxfords.
Small change, perhaps, for past customers like Aristotle Onassis,
Frank Sinatra or Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh,
who granted John Lobb their royal warrant
and remain regular customers.
John Hunter Lobb has been fitting famous feet since the 1950s,
and is now the head of the company.
The measurements we take from a customer's feet are fairly simple.
You take an outline, a pencilled outline,
and then three measurements around it.
Basically, that's all. You make note
of any peculiarities, lumps or bumps,
but the measurements are really quite simple.
Well, we've taken the measurements.
They come to the case here and look
around for what they would like us to make. And it can be anything.
They can take a bit of this and a
bit of that and we put them together.
It always takes us rather a long time to make a pair of shoes.
The actual work involved itself is slow
and you can't hurry it because handwork can't be hurried.
Six months or so for a first pair.
We've got to make the lasts, and then make the uppers,
and then put the soles on.
And since we've got a fair amount of work to do,
it all takes a long time.
Each artisan settles into a different rhythm and pace.
Making and attaching the sole may take days.
While drawing the pattern and tailoring it
to the customer's last can take a couple of hours.
OLD RECORDING: The next operation is performed by the clicker,
as they call it in the business. Cutter-outter, to you.
He's handled a good many miles of leather in his life,
and can tell at a glance the age and condition
of the animal that it came from.
The clicker's job is to cut out the leather from
patterns made from the last. This is the first rough cutting,
and he leaves plenty of margin for working.
So, once I've finished clicking the uppers then they are tied together,
as I'm doing now.
And they are sent to one of the closers and they do the
next part of the process which, of course, is to then close the uppers,
stitch the uppers together.
Morning.
Historian and author Brian Dobbs has been spending one morning a week in
Lobb's for the past 40 years.
Many years ago, I wrote the history of the firm.
I became really intrigued by the fact that they
had spent no time whatsoever
really considering the history previously.
When you look across these shelves,
you can see there is no coherent order whatsoever.
Some I had there and some I found over here, too.
Brian is on the hunt for the names of the great and the good amongst
almost 100 years' worth of customer records.
These are also old records which are probably intermediary between the
ones that are upstairs and the oldest ones, which are across there.
I'm looking for something...
Must be put back over there.
I think I see what I'm looking for.
I'll need the stepladder to get to it, however.
This is not only archaeology, this is mountaineering.
Well, it wasn't arranged for historians, that's for sure.
Now I can go and look at this at my leisure.
I get to the leather from clicker as a rough cut,
and then I open it and started to cut out leather as a pattern.
So, the closing part is not that long, actually.
Most of the time it's preparation.
And, also, because it's bespoke,
I think we ought to pay attention to even small details,
because the customer is paying for every single detail.
This machine is already at least 60, 70 years old.
But I quite like it.
This old machine's stitch, it's like a more bespoke look.
Modern machine is like a more patchy stitch.
That's why I like it, the old one.
Closing is... You get satisfaction when you finish one pair of uppers
because you see all these finished products.
Sometimes it really upsets me if it doesn't go well,
but when it goes well it really gives me joy.
To keep the craft alive, new artisans
are continually being trained.
This morning, Iranian apprentice
Parum is making the threads he will need
to hand stitch the detail on a pair of shoes.
We put three threads together.
The reason is to make the thread stronger for the hand stitch.
And it's three because we don't want
it to be really thick and we don't want it to be really thin.
We want something to look very neat and nice,
because it's in front of the shoes.
British shoes are, for me, the best.
Construction-wise, the craft of British shoes,
the best shoes in the world. That's why I came here.
The artisans working in the warrens of St James's are just one part of a
widespread shoemaking network.
Closers and makers are often employed as piece workers,
carrying out their work in home workshops.
Charlotte Wainwright does most of her closing at home
but comes in one day a week to train Parum.
Yesterday I tried to last it, I couldn't, really.
Do you want me to do it?
You want to have a go? Please, thank you.
You're not pulling it far enough forward,
and then you're just pulling it sideways.
You're not pulling it away from the angle.
I think it's just technique.
I started here when I was about 21, which is a long time ago.
And I knew I wanted to do a craft, I wanted to make things.
I wrote a letter to Eric Lobb and asked him if I could come and have a
job. And he wrote me a very funny letter back saying that they didn't
really employ very many women and there weren't any vacancies,
but I could come and have a look round.
So, I came and then started on Monday,
which was a bit of a shock to all of us.
He also told me I couldn't wear trousers, which was...
That went. On Monday morning I came in with trousers on.
In fact, they were jeans, which nearly gave him a fit.
Things tend not to change here that dramatically, to be honest.
In fact, we got really quite excited one year because John Lobb said he
was buying a new carpet for the shop.
When we came in and the new carpet was there,
it was an exact replica of the old one. So, there you go.
That's how they feel about change here.
A lot of the tools that I used I
bought from people who had them for...
Well, they probably worked with them for a good 60-odd years.
These I bought from somebody called Harry,
who's probably long gone now.
And everything that they taught me will,
hopefully, Parum will teach somebody else in years to come.
That's the idea, at least you've passed something on.
A bit of knowledge that won't die.
Down in the basement,
the leather is cut for the soles and everything is finally gathered
together to build the shoe.
OLD RECORDING: Now meet Mr Henson, a maker.
He's the man who finishes off the job by sewing on the soles.
These days, the job is finished by Mariano.
Another craftsman drawn to London by Lobb's traditional ways.
When I came over here, I discovered that there are many
techniques that in Spain have already died.
It will take between three to five years of an apprenticeship,
and then it will take your entire life to master the skills.
What I'm going to do is sew...
This is the weld. ..around the shoe.
This is the piece of leather that attach and connects
everything on the shoe.
To weld a pair of shoes, each shoe, it depends on the size of the shoe.
But say, like, one hour and a half, each one.
Each shoe, not a pair.
Well, in this particular book, these are the accounts.
And the first person I see under the As is
the Right Honourable the Viscount Alexander of Tunis.
Who, of course, is the wartime leader,
wartime hero from the African campaign.
This is always the raw material for
social history, for economic history.
And you never know what you're going to find.
I come to another one which looks like an ordinary military person,
Lieutenant Colonel.
But it's Lieutenant Colonel
Hardy Amies who, of course,
becomes Sir Hardy Amies the fashion designer.
And although Lobb shoes are
sometimes accused of being old-fashioned,
there are any number of fashion designers who actually
have worn Lobb shoes.
Like Sir Norman Hartnell, Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta,
so there's really a bit of a tribute to the fact that craftsmanship is
never, perhaps, unfashionable.
For customers who come through that door downstairs,
they are coming and joining in the footsteps of celebrities, heroes,
villains, people who have been coming to have Lobb shoes over
three centuries.
I think the holding of royal warrants
has been very important throughout
the luxury trades of London.
Here we are, right in the middle of clubland, with Boodles and Whites,
around the corner is St James's Palace.
So, this has always been a place
where distinguished people have gathered.
And to have the royal seal of
approval, this is like an imprimatur...
..and very precious to them.
What I'm doing is building the heels
and you build a heel layer by layer.
Whatever you do with one shoe, you do the same thing to the other one.
So, you carry on the whole process at the same time.
Physically, it is hard as well because I spend
most of the time sitting down with my head bent down.
At the end of the day, you feel stiff.
You need to love it.
It's something that has to come from your heart,
otherwise it's not going to work.
OLD RECORDING: And here are some of the finished
results of the processes you see.
All made by hand in the old traditional way that's still the
best, even in this machine age.
All that remains now is to wrap them up and deliver them to the customer.
And that's how famous people get their shoes.
You can have a pair made yourself, for about ten guineas.
At the end of the day, John Hunter Lobb
gives the completed shoes a final inspection.
I just look through them, just to make sure everything seems OK.
And then they're ready for the customer.
Some shoes sit there for ever. Sometimes a customer
goes abroad for a few years.
Occasionally, they've been known to run out of money.
That happens to people and they can't afford them any more.
So, they leave them with us.
When I started, there were lots of nobility in England still.
They've taken rather a low profile and they haven't quite got the same
incomes that they had in those days.
Our customers have changed,
and nowadays we get people from the Middle East and Japan,
and even from Russia and from China.
They're in countries where they still have
the ability to make enough money to have expensive items.
One regular customer is Wayne Scholes,
head of an American technology company,
who is such an admirer of Lobb shoes that he pays his staff bonuses in
bespoke footwear.
Here, you get something that's made for your feet.
For all those little weird things that my wife makes fun of,
here they're just custom. And I love that.
Look, it was something I could never afford as a kid.
My family could never have afforded it so I think there's definitely an
aspiration thing to it,
that you want to be able to get something that's made just
for you. Some people choose cars and they'll spend 100,000 or 200,000 on
a car that, for me...
Not that much interest in. But, you know, a pair of shoes
that's made for me, that's comfortable,
it's going to last for a long, long time.
I find that pretty cool. I think that's unique.
Thank you very much. No problem.
Thank you.
It's terrible, I can't stop looking at them.
I want to change something.
It's fatal.
MUSIC: In These Shoes? by Kirsty MacColl
# I once met a man with a sense of adventure
# He was dressed to thrill wherever he went
# He said, let's make love on a mountain top
# Under the stars on a big hard rock"
# I said, in these shoes?
# I don't think so
# I said, honey, let's do it here. #