HungaryTom
One Too Many
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Hi there,
I saw this thread is merged and moved but it is a good thing that it is now there where it belongs and not among jackets. Big thank you to the moderators
To answer your question: Vass carries 'regular' lasts as well: they are called: 3636 (like the double-soled Theresian or Alt Wien -Old Vienna models of shell cordovans on the first pages), Banana (this is what their shell cordovan double-soled Budapest model is built on), Peter, new Peter or P-2 (this is more designed, lenghty and classy and comes with single sole -these shell cordovan shoes of mine are made in that P-2 last) and the Budapest last with high cap so your toes and often done with this more sportsy Goyser welt have a lot of room. You get the Budapest model in Budapest last only in boxcalf and scotchgrain, not in Shell Cordovan. Rule of the house in their Budapest shop. Their bluchers are the more comfortable. The oxfords displayed are built on the sleeker R last.
There is only one problem: as a magyar shoe freak I have never had the luck to wear or own Alden or the British makers, so I really don't know how their lasts compare. Sure I have seen their pages and product photos a million times
....But that is not the same.I guess those are also made rather for the classic gentlemens fashion which Vass started after 1989. Before the Iron Curtain fell, he used to do ladies custom shoes since opened shop in 1978 but had to change to gentlemens shoes since we were flooded with the fashion stuff for ladies. I read a Hungarian article, where a journalist lady told about her purchase of a Vass shoe, that it was soft like butter (and that goes still for all their shoes - no initial pains and aches) and that her colleagues envied her but once they learned the price thought she went nuts. But Vass must have been an institution for classy shoes in a world when this was not the norm. But once ladies could get all the stuff from the West, this market niche vanished and out of need Vass then turned to the classic gentlemens models, focussing on the Budapest model and and he expanded to this designer line as well. A flexible and adapting businessman.
So yes Vass also caters gentlemen who have normal or wide feet with high instep etc. These lasts are their classic and more rustic. They carry both the classic leathers, like boxcalf, scotchgrain and shell cordovan and suede but they also service more eccentric tastes, with croco, ostrich and other exotic leathers&skins. It is better to ask them directly. I am just their faithful buyer, not their agent and don't know their entire range since I focus on what I prefer.
Their new design lasts are called the "Italian lasts". I tried also one of those ready mades but it was too narrow for me.
Cheers:
Tom
P.S. A kind of manifesto. If you dress nowadays in dress
not even black tie (??white tie??) just a dress /decent shoe (like Vass or its equals) decent suit, dress shirt and have the courage to wear a dress fedora in straw or felt with colour matched accessories like ascots nice ties ot breast pockets following your taste, so you don't look like a corporate droid mid or upper manager ...constitutes a real outcry vs. 'the system'. Much more nonconformism there than wearing the uniforms of uniformity - canonized 'deviant' templates of Che Guevara, Metal, Punk, Rapper, Goth or the mainstream look 'dressed by mama'; jeans and teeshirts or the bermudas flashing yeti hairs with slippers/sandals in summer. Not on the beach, but downtown. At the workplace.
Taste, style, culture, manners and code of the gentleman ideal deriving form the long 19th century which continued to linger on between the world wars, are becoming rapidly suspicious as this world of civilized middle class is dying out in the modern mass culture. So if you happen to wear those attributes, putting some thoughts in the ensemble you make a very strong statement and provoke hatred reactions. Not only from ghetto kids. From adults. You confuse mass people. Anger them. With STYLE. Gentry hatred. My first hand experiences. Hands down.
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