Founded in 1879 in Northampton, Crockett & Jones sits at the center of British footwear. While other venerable shoemaking names have chased trainers and other youthful styles, marketing and e-commerce director James Fox says the family company (Fox is the son-in-law of managing director Jonathan Jones, fourth generation of the co-founding Joneses) preferred to “double down.”
“We’ve stuck to our guns. There’s a lot to be said for being the shepherd and not the sheep,” says Fox. Trainers, he suggests, are not the inevitable end point of modern footwear.
To illustrate this, he cites the company’s selection of Travel Loafers. “There’s not much between this and my gym trainers,” he says of a style called the Harvard 2. “They’re just as comfortable – and they fit a lot better.”
Which is why the style has become a bestseller. “We probably now sell more loafers than Oxfords,” Fox says. Two decades ago, a penny loafer was a weekend shoe. Now it is simply the one that works – from early flights to late dinners – without needing to be changed halfway through the day.
If you know your loafer lore, you will be aware that the slip-on style, so much a foundation of the Ivy League look, comes from Norway. Hence the “Weejuns” moniker of those made by G.H. Bass and launched in the States in 1936. Based on the type of shoes worn by Norwegian farmers and fishermen, themselves said to owe something to the moccasins worn by Native Americans, the loafer is, above all, about comfort.
The brief back in Blighty from Fox’s boss, and perhaps more importantly, father-in-law, was to make something that could do service over multiple trips in short succession – whether by plane, train or automobile, and particularly capable of coping with endless airport slogs. And then, when out the other side, they needed to work for meetings and evenings out, too. Or just holidays.
The Harvard 2 answers this in the form of a loafer made from pliant milled calf leather (black or brown) that has super-flexible rubber “City” soles that give support and grip. It’s pleasingly lightweight and, because it has flexi-everything – shoulder insoles and welts – it’s ready to go; you don’t need to break it in.
Then there are its siblings, the suede styles – a colorful array of penny loafers, in the Sorrento model. And the super-stripped-back Salcombe 2. These all come with gum-colored rubber wedge soles.
But if you really want to turn heads with your loafer game, why not go for the two-tone Richmond 2, in Walnut milled calf and Stone canvas, which, given the stable from which this magazine comes, is aptly named a “spectator” style. The contrasting color setup (and in the case of the Richmond 2, we’re also talking two different fabrics) was popular some hundred years ago, and this choice will mark you out as something of a loafer connoisseur.
Crockett & Jones claims these, along with their plainer, Harvard 2 relatives, are “the most comfortable Goodyear-welted loafers in the world.” And being a penny loafer, both styles have a strap with a detail cut into it, in which it is said the wearers of old would stick a penny,in case they needed to make a telephone call while out and about. Well, it could be useful should your cell run out of charge. If you can find a payphone, that is.
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