In the morning of Day II at Milan fashion week the BDMOTP team visited Santoni on the via Montenapoleone, a street in Milan which is to men’s fashion and style what Beale street in Memphis TN is to blues music, and indeed got the full Monte in that we were given a grand tour of the spacious premises located on the second floor above what must have been yet another palazzo – a tour not easy to forget, for what makes Santoni so impressive is not just the incredible array of leathers, materials, shapes, styles, forms in shoes and other (mostly) men’s footwear used, no, what makes this unique brand grander than any other shoe store around (only Berluti may be comparable but then only in quality but not in variety) is that all the myriad types of collections present from showroom to showroom from display to display are all – and without exception – are made and finished with the highest possible quality which you will be able to find anywhere. It is therefore not just the variety of the collections or the high quality itself, but the veritable royal & voluptuous abundance of high quality which makes Santoni so rare.
At Santoni, le roi c’est moi!
Fox-fur covered moonboots; a flat folding Derby; red, yellow, and blue crocodile loafers; penthouse slippers; triple-buckled riding boots made to fit a Machiavellian prince; knee-high buckle-strapped sandals; spiked ankle-high ghetto boots; many traditional classics, classics, classics with loads of elegance; satin strings on color-faded city walkers: What we find here at Santoni and what we are shown with much love and passion by the proud makers & sales personnel is an incredible collection of footwear which can only be described as baroque or rococo in its abundance & variety and to which no set of pictures we take – no matter how beautiful – will do poetic justice.
Santoni has 500 employees and most of whom are creative artisans & craftsmen working daily from a traditional production facility located in the provinces of the middle of Italy, and has stores in Milan, Rome, Cannes, St. Moritz, Tokyo, Beijing, Guangzhou, Dong Guan, Shanghai, Doha, Moscow, and, indeed, Baku. Santoni works in cooperation with a famous car company on the luxury finishing of car interiors as well as with a luxury watchmaker on watch bands. As for price the different collections come in three different ranges: affordable, high-end, and a category which BDMOTP will qualify here as Special!
For the man who loves a high design quality shoe, and who cannot find the type of shoe that he is looking for anywhere else, the Via Montenapoleone in Milano today is calling you. Please let it be known that Santoni is not just worth one trip or one visit as a luxury destination if you would go today, but that Santoni will be a place which you will visit time and again for the rest of your life – because these shoes will wear on you and once they are yours, you are guaranteed to come back to Milano to have them remade, tailored, or changed, or replaced.
In fact, shoes are more personal than cars. So if you are the type who only trusts one good and old car dealer where you have been for the longest time ever since you can remember, then you will be safe coming to Santoni in Milano knowing that this new relationship will not end any time soon.
Posted by Sandro Joo and photos by Paloma Canseco.
