Patent Pending

Every black tie season the same question comes into the store. Does it have to be patent? The short answer is no. The longer answer is a story about a shine, a hat, and a man who put his name to nothing.

Patent leather is named for a patent. The man who made it popular in America never filed one.

In 1818 a carriage maker in Newark, New Jersey, handed an inventor named Seth Boyden the glossy peak of a German military cap. Boyden worked out the lacquer, coat after coat of linseed oil, and in 1819 began making patent leather in Newark. It became an American industry.

He rarely patented anything, and never this.

The appeal was practical. Patent is close to waterproof and never needs polish, so it arrives shining and stays that way. By the 1850s it was the evening shoe, and by the 1930s the plain patent Oxford had become the shoe of black tie. It still is.

So does it have to be patent? No. Since the 1950s a well-polished black calf Oxford has been accepted with a dinner suit, and it is the more versatile shoe. If black tie comes round once a year, buy a calf whole cut and wear it to the office the rest of the time.

But if you own a tuxedo and wear it, patent is the right shoe. The lapels of a dinner jacket are faced in silk. Patent answers that sheen at the other end of the body. Calf, however well shone, does not quite get there.

Our Savoy is a whole cut Oxford, made from a single piece of calf leather and finished in Onyx patent. There is no toe cap, no seam across the vamp and no broguing. The eyelets are blind, so no metal breaks the surface, and it sits on a leather sole. A whole cut leaves a shoemaker nowhere to hide, and patent shows everything. Together they make the purest form of the evening shoe.

Wear it with a tuxedo, a white dress shirt and a silk bow tie. Black silk socks, over the calf, so no skin shows when you sit.

Patent asks for different care. Never polish it and never condition it. Wipe it after each wear with a microfibre cloth and a neutral patent care when it needs a deeper clean. Put a cedar shoe tree in it overnight and keep it in its bag between outings.

Two centuries on, the shine is the same. The patent remains pending.