About two years ago, a new tenant moved into Savile Row, the London street known as a center of men’s tailoring for more than 200 years.
Rather than custom-made wool trousers and silk-lined jackets, however, Arthur Sleep sells bespoke shoes for men, women and children, crafted by hand in as few as five hours by shoemakers working in the store’s basement.
And what says love for Valentine’s Day more than a pair of handmade shoes?
“We give you that experience where you are actually meeting a maker,” said Jahangir Azam, 37, who founded the company in 2013 with a college friend, Christopher Boadle, 38. “We’re measuring you, and you’re going through a process where you can have something completely bespoke. I don’t think anybody else does this on the planet, where you can have something in this time frame.”
The founders were sitting in the small office that they share, down the hall from a workroom where one shoemaker was hand-cutting suede tassels for a pair of loafers while another was stretching leather over a last — the industry term for a foot-shaped mold — to create a men’s dress shoe.
Upstairs, in a large space that Arthur Sleep shares with the men’s wear brand Cad & The Dandy, were sample shoes: evening slippers in velvet and cashmere, detailed with initials and illustrations embroidered in bright silk thread; slip-on loafers; refined sneakers; women’s flats; children’s slippers adorned with images of teddy bears and elephants. The footwear is offered in black and brown leather, of course, but there also is periwinkle blue suede, wool tweed and colorfully patterned pieces of vintage Turkish kilim.
