Shoemaker · London · Founded 1958
George Cleverley
George Cleverley is a London shoemaker in the Royal Arcade, making custom and off-the-shelf shoes known for a long, slightly squared-off toe.
George Cleverley founded his own workshop in 1958 after decades at another London maker, and the house is known for a distinctive elongated, gently squared 'chisel' toe. It makes bespoke and ready-to-wear from premises in the Royal Arcade off Old Bond Street.
The Cleverley shape
The house's signature is a last with a long, slightly squared toe (the chisel), which lengthens the foot visually and is unmistakable once you know it. It has been widely imitated and rarely equalled, because the shape only works if the proportions of the whole last support it.
George Cleverley himself worked in the trade from before the First World War and did not open under his own name until 1958, which is why a house founded that recently has a nineteenth-century pedigree.
The house after its founder
George Cleverley died in 1991 and the business was continued by makers who had worked with him, preserving his lasts and his shapes. The chisel toe survives because the lasts survived, which is how continuity works in shoemaking: not through a name but through wood.
The workshop remains in the Royal Arcade and the bespoke operation is small; the ready-to-wear range is made in England on lasts derived from the bespoke shapes.
The bespoke process
Measurement and observation of both feet, a last carved in wood, a trial shoe, adjustment of the last, then the finished pair. Expect the better part of a year for a first commission and considerably less for subsequent pairs on the same last.
The house's ready-to-wear is made on lasts derived from its bespoke shapes, which is the closest a factory shoe gets to a bespoke silhouette. It is Goodyear-welted rather than hand-welted, and priced accordingly.
The record
What it costs
Prices across the site →These are not quotations. Prices below are the most recent figures we could attribute to a source, shown in the currency they were published in.
| What | Service | Price | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bespoke oxford shoeAn indicative band, not a quotation. Bespoke entry prices normally exclude tax and cloth beyond the house bunch, and houses raise them without announcement. | Bespoke | £5,000–7,500 | September 2026 |
| Ready-to-wear shoeAn indicative band, not a quotation. Bespoke entry prices normally exclude tax and cloth beyond the house bunch, and houses raise them without announcement. | Ready To Wear | £900–1,600 | September 2026 |
Where they travel
Find a maker who visits you →Trunk shows let a house take orders and hold fittings away from its own workshop. Dates move; treat this as the pattern, not a calendar, and confirm with the house.
Houses often considered alongside it
Grouped because they compete for the same commission or work in a comparable idiom: not a ranking, and not an equivalence.
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John Lobb (St James's)
London · 1849John Lobb of St James's is a family-owned London firm making shoes by hand to each customer's own foot shape, separate from John Lobb Paris.
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Gaziano & Girling
London · 2006Gaziano & Girling is a shoemaker, founded in 2006, whose off-the-shelf shoes have unusually shapely, hand-polished finishing that raised standards for factory shoes.
Picture credits 3
- An illustration of a welted shoe of the kind the house makes. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art
- Store front of John Lobb, 88 Jermyn St, London: Photograph · OlafJanssen · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
- An illustration of a welted shoe of the kind the house makes. Not a photograph of the house's own work.: Original art · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale · Il Sartoriale original art