I have met two fantastic shoe enthusiasts, one is Steve who can find any picture you want to know, to illustrate and to explain about shoes, outfit or anything. The other one is Andy who tried almost every shoemaker in the world, and had Gaziano & Girling from this brand’s humble beginning. He knows so much about lasts from shoemakers. Andy does not like Crockett & Jones Benchgrade and the one he picks is the lining leather. He mentioned this point several times, however I did not have a clue about it. So this time, I run a countdown of lining leather from different shoemakers, maybe this head to head comparison tells the difference.
Yohei Fukuda
Mattina
J.FitzPatrick
Crockett & Jones
Edward Green
John Lobb St. James
Saint Crispin’s
Aubercy
J.M.Weston
Maftei
Sons of Henrey
With so many examples, I feel Yohei Fukuda is most impressive as the pores are so fine. John Lobb St. James is at another level needless to say. In middle range price point, Sons of Henrey has an advantage.
But all these are just intuition, I don’t know objectively what I should look at. The pore size?
The worst one in this list is very unexpected, the great French shoemaker, Aubercy. Lining leather seems corrected and this level is quite normal among Italian shoes, such as a.testoni. Please someone tell me it is not bad.