Brand: foster and son

  This article was originally written back in 2014. Back then I had tried seven bespoke shoemakers, and nothing in Japan. Seven years later, the number has more than doubled, and the spread is wider – also enc...

If you love clothes, it’s not easy to resist the call of a new season. As much as you know the value of what you own, and want to wear it forever, shiny new things are tempting. The best defence, I find, is to invest ...

As the last post on building a wardrobe - focused on Neapolitan tailoring - proved popular, I thought I'd do a second looking at shoes. But rather than look at my whole shoe collection, which numbers more than 40 pair...

A style post today, after several product and profile pieces in recent weeks.  To break it down into bullets: I love grey shirts, primarily with navy suits or jackets as an alternative to white and blue. It feels urban...

   A few weeks ago I received my final pair of Foster & Son bespoke shoes. The process has, unfortunately, been both good and bad.  First, the good. The fitting I had with John Spencer – Foster’s lastmaker...

  Emma (Lakin), at Foster & Son in London, is creating the pattern for my first pair of bespoke shoes with them – mid-brown Oxfords.  Folding paper onto the last and marking it is the most popular method of d...

  This is Jon Spencer, last maker at Foster & Son, making up the last for my first pair of bespoke shoes from the team. The black, Oxford whole-cuts will have the classic ‘West End’ Foster’s toe shape, slightl...

Foster & Son is one of the great names of British bespoke shoemaking. In recent years, that reputation was largely founded on master lastmaker Terry Moore. I only got to know Foster’s relatively recently, after Ter...

This column in Japanese magazine Free & Easy is the result of the photo shoot I posted about before Christmas. I have no idea what the Japanese text says, but hopefully it faithfully reports my opinions on shoes and...