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P: Okay, so the next brand
up is Loake. In my case, I got a penny loafer; this is in suede and you can see
it's olive green. A little bit of bolder color. R: A little
more unusual. P: Right. The model name is Eton and this
is £240. R: Yeah and I think that
includes about like 20% VAT so in the past
you could just subtract that and they would ship it to the US
but I noticed Loake disallowed European stockists to ship them to Canada and the
US so if you're in Europe it's very easy to
find those shoes and Loake has always been known as a value brand,
kind of English styling but now in the US it's a lot harder to actually get
the shoes and I don't know why they did that,
maybe they want to sell them directly and have a markup in there
but it's a little disappointing, I thought.
P: Right. I think so, too.
R: Yeah so I actually got a pair of boots and from their 1880s series
which we'll cover in another video of this style when it's all about boots
and best boots under a certain budget. And in the past, I've had
other Loake shoes yeah, they're a traditional
brand or leather, it's calf leather, it's it's good quality, it's not like the best
leather in the world, it's not crappy leather, it's somewhere
in a medium segment..
But how do you like the suede? P: Well, I
think it's the fact that this is a very sort of
traditional English styling helps to offset the fact that I did choose to
get a slightly bolder color. Part of the reason I went for something
that was different is because as you'll see, as we continue to go
through our selections here, I ended up getting quite a few different
brown suede loafers; that's just what they
offered us in a lot of cases so to have something that was different
and a little bit bolder, I thought was advantageous and it's nice
that again, it's offset by that more traditional
last shape. R: And I mean they have a lot of classic
last shapes, right? A lot of business shoes that you can wear: brown, black
shoes and even the boots. I think their suedes
are very nice, have a nice touch kind of a short nap, they're not too soft
but they're not also not super stiff.
I think their
regular calf letters are maybe a little stiffer. Workmanship, they're made in
England. As such, they are Goodyear welted which
is like a standard over there like they don't do blake really, England
so yeah, what do you think about the
finishing? P: I thought that the construction of these
was very high quality all around. The stitching was nice and even,
I didn't see any loose threads or anything, the way that the
the sole was attached to the upper, I thought was good, no
you know — obvious defects there, very high-quality construction all,
around, I thought. R: good. P: As far as fit with these is
concerned, I was disappointed that they didn't fit
me better out of the box for how nice think they look.
In addition to being loose on my feet
overall, my heels do tend to slip out of them. I do
also have the same problem where they're hitting the underside of my tibias
actually on both feet. R: Okay, interesting.
Okay, so what would you say what size did you get in these? P: this was size 8
UK and I did follow the sizing guidelines on their website
as to taking your typical size, which in my case is an 8.5 US,
then you would convert that to UK sizing which I think is one lower, so
that would be a 7.5 but they recommended that you size up a
half size from what you would normally get,
ergo, I picked a size 8 UK but that all said, they again did not
fit me as well out of the boxes I hope they would. R: Do you think half size
smaller would be a better fit or would it be too short, or what do you think?
P: you know, I think probably having that half size smaller
would help.
What I'm noticing in getting a lot of these shoes and a lot
of loafers in particular is, loafers just by their nature because
they cover less of your foot, are harder to have an exact fit
right away. R: well and the problem with the loafer is you don't have the lacing
system to keep stuff in place. If you're an Ox
or a Derby, you can just tie it down, with a loafer the fit is
more important because if the tongue comes up further or the
vamp is cut lower, there's even more area exposed and if it doesn't have a
tight heel fit, you just slip in the back. So yeah
loafers — buying loafers unseen is always harder and it's more
risky.
So always make sure that you can return them
if they don't fit and otherwise, it's a pain.
P: Right, absolutely. and that's definitely something that I
went through the learning process with as we did this with these different
retailers. I think ultimately these will probably
be salvageable for me, I could you know make some modifications such as
putting an adhesive pad on the tongue here to move my foot back
more to the heel of the shoe. Also, I will need to put into
all of these shoes, insoles. In my case, they're
mainly for perspiration and odor as we've talked about in previous videos
in particular our video on how to deodorize shoes which you can find right
here that's something i have to do with all
of my shoes is put those insoles in there
so that should probably help to snug up that fit a little bit as well. R: In an ideal
world though, people should always get the right
size shoe.
P: Absolutely. R: and sometimes, if you're unsure you can just buy two sizes;
I've done that before and then just send the one back that you don't like.
I mean, with that being said, disregarding the fit because that's a little harder, what would be your rating? P: I gave these a
three and a half, keeping the fit in mind in my rating
and also considering that comfort factor that the height of the side of the
shoe here was rubbing a little bit.
If we were to discount those
fit issues given how nice the construction
is, how nice I think the look is, these maybe
could have gotten up to a four out of five or maybe
even higher..
