The five-hour bespoke shoe service
‘Fitted at breakfast and delivered by lunchtime’ is the mantra at Arthur Sleep, the most technologically advanced atelier on Savile Row
Arthur Sleep, which opened on Savile Row last summer, is a bespoke shoe-making service with a simple USP — to cut waiting times, drastically. The team are able to fit a shoe at breakfast and deliver it at lunchtime.
The co-founders, Christopher Boadle, 38, and Jahangir Azam, 36, met as accounting students and launched the company in 2013. They started out making evening slippers, hence the name, a play on the Cockney rendering of “half-asleep”. But they soon developed their range and a method that would allow them to create a pair of custom-fitted loafers in just five hours. “There’s no one else in the world offering anything like this,” Boadle says.
Initially the business grew via requests from friends and acquaintances, but now Arthur Sleep’s designs are worn by everyone from Prince William to the officers of the Household Cavalry and the rapper ASAP Rocky, Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton and the actor Robert De Niro.
It’s a slick 14-person operation. Upstairs, a burr walnut display unit shows off a gallery of shoes made from hand-embroidered velvets, dulcet deerskin and antique kilims sourced from northern Pakistan. Here foot measurements are taken physically and digitally via foam impression and a 3D scanner respectively, a two-minute process, before the customer descends to the 64 sq m micro factory to select materials (calfskin, suede, cashmere and linen in 188 shades and 36 lining options) and flourishes such a contrast-colour binding, tassels or embroidery. Alternatively, the Bespoke by Post service can take measurements from home and send leather and fabric swatches anywhere in the world.
The nitty-gritty of the process remains a trade secret, but Matthew Jones, Arthur Sleep’s head of strategy, explains: “We were able to start from first principles and understand which areas of the production process we could make a little more craft agnostic and which areas really did require the human hand, to build our machinery in collaboration with the tooling and machine manufacturers.”
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Each Arthur Sleep cordwainer (the traditional term for shoemaker) is trained in the entire shoemaking process, from measuring feet to the final polishing of the finished shoes. No commission is too far-fetched. For the King’s coronation on May 6, Arthur Sleep will be preparing a “couple of special pieces” made from the saddle of one of the late Queen’s favourite horses. “We’ll use the sides to make a pair of Chelsea boots, then a pair of penny loafers from the top,” Boadle says.
Playful creations include slippers made from a 1960s Royal Mint money bag, “put together in tribute to the Great Train Robbery of 1963”, and a set of boat shoes for the crew of a Lürssen superyacht. Will Perry, the Paralympian swimmer, has asked for a pair of pool sliders made from his Team GB racing suits while another client’s hiking boots will incorporate part of the sleeping bag used by George Lowe — the mountaineer who helped to prepare the way for Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to conquer Everest in 1953 — to be worn on another ascent attempt.
Sneakers, heels and more will be added to Boadle and Azam’s offering in the near future, and an outlet on New York’s Fifth Avenue is in the works.
From £1,000 for a pair of bespoke shoes, arthursleep.com
