After the death of Mr George Cleverley in 1991, Mr George Glasgow and last maker Mr John Carnera, who had been working alongside Mr Cleverley since 1978, were asked to carry on the business. Mr Glasgow has been the managing director ever since, and he opened the current shop in London’s Royal Arcade on Old Bond Street. When Mr Anthony Cleverley died, his niece asked Mr Glasgow and Mr Carnera to take on his mantle and combine the designs and history of these two great shoemakers. Our selection is taken from styles by both Mr George Cleverley and Mr Anthony Cleverley.

“George [Cleverley] told me that his nephew was a wonderful shoemaker, but that he couldn’t get on with him at all, so they never spoke,” explains Mr Glasgow. As a result, the two Mr Cleverleys worked in parallel, but separately; Mr George Cleverley was a society shoemaker with a shop in Mayfair, and his nephew worked from home in north London’s Edmonton area for a small, but very exclusive, group of clients.

According to Mr Glasgow, Mr Anthony Cleverley only accepted new customers if they were introduced by an existing customer, a policy that produced a list of names including Baron Alexis de Redé, Mr Mark Birley, a few Rothschilds and a Forte or two. To that illustrious group, Mr George Cleverley added Messrs Rudolph Valentino, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, a couple of English dukes and a member of the British royal family. Today the author Mr Tom Wolfe and Rolling Stone Mr Charlie Watts are devoted customers – in case you’re wondering, Mr Watts recently ordered a pair of unusual ghillie brogues.

The classic style of George Cleverley shoes reflects the company’s extraordinary roll call of clients, past and present. The company makes elegant but masculine English shoes designed for strolling across the pavements of Mayfair, the polished floors of gentleman’s clubs (White’s for the seniors, 5 Hertford Street for younger customers) and the antique rugs of country houses. Of course they’re also to be found on New York’s Upper East Side, and in Tokyo’s better restaurants. The dress shoes are made to be worn with beautifully tailored suits, English shirts and hand-stitched silk ties – although the brown Oxford brogues, inspired by the casual nature of British country life, work just as well with cords and blue jeans. The shoes represent a sophisticated expression of Britain’s traditionally understated approach to style.

George Cleverley continues to produce bespoke shoes in its Mayfair shop for a select clientele, but with a production that only intermittently achieves 10 pairs a week, it also creates bench-made shoes for men reluctant to wait the year that it takes between first fitting and delivery. “I had one customer recently,” recalls Mr Glasgow, “who ordered a pair of shoes when his wife was newly pregnant. When I next saw him for a fitting, he said, 'She’s had the baby, but when am I going to get the shoes?’” The company’s bench-made shoes are an opportunity for men to become well heeled rather more quickly than that.