Hi! I'm Kirby Allison, and we love helping the well-dressed take care of their
wardrobes. Today I'm here at Not Standard with Justin Fitzpatrick, the founder of
The Shoe Snob and J Fitzpatrick Footwear and he's just recently come back to the
United States and embarked on a pretty aggressive American trunk show and so
he's going around right now visiting a bunch of the different Not Standards and...
You know it's an absolute delight to have you passing through Dallas. So thank
you. Thank you for adding Dallas to your schedule and you know of course anyone
that's into shoes knows Justin quite well. I mean I feel like most of us have
kind of grown up with him. You know with his journey you know starting out as
just a you know kind of an enthusiast you know shoe connoisseur. Evolving that
into someone that was you know kind of foremost patina and glissade guy in
London and then now launching at J Fitzpatrick Footwear which has been
pretty successful. I mean wildly successful right? Five years going. Five
years, which is incredible. So thanks for spending time with us. Yeah, my
pleasure. Good to be in Texas. Yeah, it's been a while.
So you know this is your your trunk show portfolio. So tell us, what are some of
your favorite models that you have here? Well I really loved the Rainier. This is
one of my original designs, and what I was trying to do is create my version of
an Adelaide but do it very differently with with the Adelaide peace sweeping
back almost like a little wing and making it smaller not like a full
Adelaide because I wanted to have this wing cap on it and as well doing a heel
cap that is about 50% of the size of your traditional heel cap that goes like
in this kind of manner and doing it almost like a soft one so that you
really get a big piece of leather here that I always wanted to play around with
fabrics, braiding, two-tone Suede's. Yeah, really so you you really elongate
the aesthetic of the shoe too- yeah exactly so the Rainier is one of my original
favorites that I feel like I put a lot of my personal likings into to kind of
differentiate myself from all the other Adelaide's and
spectators if you have it. The Laurelhurst as well. I'm not crazy about
penny loafers in general so what I wanted to create I loved the cleanliness
of the slipper look but I don't really like slippers. So what I wanted to do is
make a slipper shoe. So something that has a proper sole on it but the clean
slipper look. Nothing on it., except a medallion because that medallion gives
it a little bit more dress appeal. If you take away the medallion it doesn't sit
as well underneath the suit as if you add the medallion to it and nobody had
this on offer when I when I launched it and I just thought you know it's
different, it's elegant, it's simple. People can relate to it. They can wear it
with the pair of jeans. They can wear it with a suit and then yeah add in my
medallion which took a lot of work. Actually Tony and I worked on this
together. Literally in the same day he was like well what about a line here,
what about a line there, and I'm like okay yeah that looks good. No, that
doesn't look good ...and creating medallions are really challenging
because there's so many of them out there and many of them look exactly
alike so creating one that's unique but still elegant and ....so is this your like brand
medallion? Yeah, this is my first medallion. The heart medallion as we call
it. This is the original one that I created and then I created a couple more
also with the help of my employees. One of my employees has a talent
for creating medallions so she helps out there. I mean if we want to talk about my
ultimate favorite it's the Stefano Model because I'm really I just love the
saddle. I just feel like the the blend between having two pieces be the same
and then this kind of middle strap being completely different either texture or
color just really sit so well underneath the the trouser. This is done with
red but this could he is equally been done with you know a dark brown and a
light brown or a dark ...Yeah, lots of guys like to get it tonal because it's a little
bit more safe. I love the striking tone on tone.
There's so many variations with that and that's what I love about this.
This you know with black on black would be a beautifully elegant shoe but
still you know still different enough it would kind of catch the eye but in a
subtle way. Exactly, you know it's gonna be different than your classic cap-toe
but still equally elegant with a nice plain toe you could possibly even wear
it to a formal after gathering. So I have a special place in my heart for that... and
then what's the Tony? The Tony is this model. So it's my whole cut but in making
a whole cut I didn't want to be just like every other brand that either has
nothing on it or medallion. I wanted to make it uniquely different. So I created
this what I called the bouncy ball effect. So a heel cap punch and then so
it's like it bounces and then goes into the wing cap to create this flowing the
set of punching. So it's kind of an imitation wingtip?
Yeah, imitation wingtip, heel counter, and then this little connecting piece that
I'd never seen anybody else done but I just kind of thought it was cool and I
thought it would give a nice differentiation to the whole cut. That's
not like everybody else's but not so edgy that it can't be worn to the same
type of events that people need hole cut situation for. Another one that I'm
kind of proud of is and it's another hole cut but it's a apron hole cut that
I had never seen anybody do...and truth be told I'm not a fan of derbies but I like
the apron. So I said how can I make the apron on the oxford? and it's a
bit wild because you just kind of have this stoppage line but everything on
this is just stitched on top of the leather. So it's a whole cut with hand
stitch apron and hand stitch heel counters and you can see that they they
end here and they extend to the sole but really that ends as well. So this is just
one piece with this added stitching... because it looks like it could be a kind
of this traditional it would be a derby.. Yeah, but here it's an Oxford. Yeah. Yeah...
and it's not something you see but as you know there are other guys
that maybe don't care for derbies but they like the look of an apron. So I
tried to do that for them. Yeah because so many people have an apron
stitch derby and always trying to kind of set myself apart from the rest. I
wanted to create something different. What about your casual? So you've yet
this is a relatively recent model... Yeah, I got the string low for the
Issaquah. So that's again just another unique loafer. I mean the string whether
it's practical or not it's just something different than your typical
penny loafer or even the hole cut loafer. It adds another element of kind of
pizzazz and style that some people may be fine is a bit too much but other
people that appreciate shoes a lot more find it to be another nice unique little
touch that you can add to your outfit as you know like wearing a bold sock or
something... but those can be difficult to do differently. Yeah, definitely! So but
the great thing about is it transitions from you know denim casual to even
looking nice under a sort of sharp suit and then another new one we got is the
the who cut loafer, but take away the medina obviously because now we're
going braided..and I've really fallen in love with this braided look, particularly
in the suede and I think next season I'm gonna go wild on it but again just
another something different you don't see very often. Especially braided.
But I think it's it's nice. It looks good...and this is another great shoe with
the braided you know great summer shoe right? Yeah, for sure. Great. Cool. Hey! Well,
Thank you! My pleasure! Yeah, I appreciate it. If you enjoyed this video
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