Raphael Pagliano
One-of-a Kind /Custom-Made / Bespoke
Horween Shell Cordovan
Field (Navvy) Boot
Euro 720

Raphael Pagliano was a master shoemaker working in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. Although American born, he worked for much of his career in Europe, apprenticing in Italy and later graduating to the workshop of no less a luminary than Nikolous Tuczek, when the master’s shop was still in Clifford Street. One can only presume that the young Pagliano must have worked, at one time, side by side with George Cleverley when he too was still with Tuczek.

When Pagliano returned to America to establish his own workshop it was a time when the two main producers of Shell Cordovan shoes, Alden and Allen Edmonds, were producing few if any boots in this material. The boom in the market for cordovan boots had not quite happened and clients for Field Boots, Paratrooper Boot or high top dress boots in cordovan were relegated to custom shoe and boot makers of which Pagliano set himself up to be one. Working not far from the American “home” of Cordovan leather, the Horween Company, also in Chicago, Pagliano was able to pick out the choicest hides for his small custom workshop. (The Horween markings are visible inside this shoe, even if difficult to photograph.)

Interestingly too, Pagliano’s design for the boot shown here was subsequently adopted by Alden with only minor variations when they finally recognized the ready market for cordovan boots and began to produce them in great numbers. One could say that this is the prototype of the most popular Shell Cordovan boot in history, Alden’s Field Boot. Whatever the case, it is without question the handsomest of boots, with sleek lines reminiscent of the traditional Veldtschoen boot but enlivened with great effect with a discreet cap toe.

Size Details:

Shoe Condition:

Neuwertig/near new. This is, as stated, hand made, the sole hand sewn into a closed channel with a later (removable) thin "Topy" rubber protective sole added so that, in effect, there is no wear to the leather sole underneath.