Alligator Shoes

There is a pair of shoes on these pages this month that I have been reluctant to part with.

They are a custom-order Florsheim Imperial in alligator, monk strap, circa 1970. I have had them for some time. Every few months I photograph them again, write the listing, and then find some reason to delay. This is, I confess, a known occupational hazard.

I describe them finally because alligator — real alligator, American alligator, not the farmed substitute that appears today on shoes that cost four times as much — is a material that no longer exists in this form. The skins available to the great American shoemakers of the 1960s and 70s came from wild animals, were tanned by craftsmen who have since retired, and were worked by hands that understood what the material required. The result has a depth and irregularity that farmed alligator, for all its consistency, cannot replicate. Consistency, in exotic leather, is not a virtue.

I have written elsewhere on these pages about the Endangered Species regulations that now govern the sale of such items in Germany and France — and the absurdity of treating farmed alligator as equivalent to truly endangered species. That is a bureaucratic confusion. What I want to say here is simpler: when this pair is gone, there will not be another like it. That is true of much of what I offer, but it is especially true here.

The price reflects this. I am aware that it appears high to someone who has not handled one of these shoes. To someone who has — to the gentleman who already owns a pair of Imperials in calfskin and understands what the last feels like underfoot — the price will require no explanation at all.

If you are not yet that gentleman, I would encourage you to read the Florsheim piece on these pages before deciding.