Footwear
GRENSON SHOES Chris Sullivan meets Tim Little, creative director and CEO of Northampton Shoemaker Grenson, to discuss the ins and outs of gentlemen’s footwear www.grenson.com www.timlittle.com
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“A customer sent me a pair of shoes a couple of years ago, saying he had been given them as Demob shoes when he left the army in 1945. He was concerned that a bit of stitching was coming loose at the back. We tidied it up and sent them back to him”
man after my own heart, Tim Little is obsessed with the craft of shoemaking. He loves the smell of leather, the welt construction, the polish, the craftsmanship and the truism echoed by George Frazier, the esteemed sixties fashion columnist: “If you want to know if a guy is well dressed? Look down. Hopefully, you will see a pair of shoes, an item that tells all about its wearer.” I bought my first pair of Tim Little shoes from his King’s Road store in 1999. Simple loafers that looked great with chinos or a sixties slack. I wore them into the ground. Subsequently, in 2010, Little became the owner and creative director of one of the great classic British cordwainer companies, Grenson, and has since maintained their position but added quite a twist by taking classics and, as well as recreating them, giving them a somewhat unique edge. His Roseberry (he gives each one of his line a different moniker), for example, is an archetypal,
rather suave plain-toe five eyelet derby based on the classic 207 shape and, constructed from bookbinder leather in rust, brown or black, features a triple welt that gives the item no small degree of heft and lashings of character.
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