SLIP SERVICE

On an annual rummage through my father’s wardrobe, which he uses less and less in his later years, I came across a real treasure. I have become something of a scavenger, and pilfer his well-earned bits and bobs with probably too much self-entitlement. Most recently what beguiled me was a pair of highly polished slip-ons from Poulsen Skone, which, through decades of evolution a bit too complicated and off-topic to go into, is now known as G.J. Cleverley.

What caught my eye with these was the counter-cultural nature of shoes that were, as it turns out, more than 40 years old. They are burgundy, have lantern tassels and are Goodyear welted, which indicates they were not just for indoors. To me, my father was always a good old-fashioned British conformist, and I never knew he was a closet renegade (literally). You see, in the City of London until the end of the seventies, standard attire