Fashion makes you experience similar trends, even if in slightly different styles. In the 1930s, between the World Wars, American and English college students adopted a version of a slip-on shoe that Norwegian fishermen used, that people came to know as the penny loafer, a trend that started out disruptive and ended up becoming a fashionable choice for all occasions. But the loafer was merely the beginning of an extended “family” of shoes, men’s tassel loafers being one of its the most popular descendants.
They were born in 1948, when Hungarian actor Paul Lukas went into the office of the New York firm Farkas & Kovacs, demanding a version of the shoe with smaller leather tassels at the end of the laces. A variant where the lacing also ran along the shoe’s opening was made, but while the design pleased him, they were a bad fit, leading him to two other companies.
He left the right shoe at Lawcourt, in New York, and the left one at Morris Shoemakers, in Los Angeles. In the end, both of them turned to the much bigger shoe company Alden for help. They opted to start by using the model made by Farkas & Kovacs, but quickly understood it needed some big changes, so they chose to ignore making a lace-up shoe, taking the penny loafer with their very own apron as a base, making it on a comfortable round last, and putting the leather strap with tassels as a decoration around the opening.
Paul Lukas was very pleased; the world came to know the first exemplary of men’s tassel loafers and we can all be thankful to the work of those brave pioneers.
Mass produced shoes tend to be all about the bottom line, which is understandable. After all, if you need to constantly ship extraordinarily large amounts of shoes to dozens of stores, you may not have time to think about designing the superior product. Your sole concern is to sell as many shoes as you can, at the lowest possible cost to your company.
At Carlos Santos Shoes, that is most certainly not the philosophy; in fact, we believe the very opposite. You see, in our view, the act of buying a pair of our shoes is so much more than just buying a pair of shoes. It is an important vote of absolute confidence our customers put on our ability to deliver shoes that are fashionable, practical and durable, because just like us, they too aspire to achieve and maintain a look that is both classic in nature and modern in flavor.
This means taking our time in the designing process, sourcing the very best materials from France and Italy, and then hand them to our master craftmanship, so that they can work their magic. That’s why our handcrafted tassel loafers are the very best you will be able to find! They’re clean and simple, but playful, alluding to a classic tradition of menswear, they make for great companions to a cotton suit or even to a pair of slim chinos and a nice shirt.
Carlos Santos Shoe’s handcrafted tassel loafers communicate to those around you that you are a gentleman that enjoys the finer details, instead of settling for the minor things. You can wear them with all shades of brown, beige, navy and khaki and chose whether you prefer them in leather or suede. To say they make perfect combinations easy would be to put it mildly, as our handmade tassel loafers will really help you to class up your attire.
