Shoemaker · Paris
John Lobb (Paris)
John Lobb Paris is a Hermès-owned shoe brand selling high-end factory-made and made-to-order shoes, and is a separate company from the London John Lobb.
John Lobb Paris has been owned by Hermès since the 1970s and operates as an international ready-to-wear and made-to-order shoemaker, with production in Northampton. It also offers bespoke. It is a different company from John Lobb of St James's Street in London.
What it makes
Goodyear-welted ready-to-wear and made-to-order shoes, produced in Northampton, at the top of the factory-made price range. The lasts are the house's own and are the reason to buy: a John Lobb Paris shoe is recognisable by its shape rather than by any construction feature unique to it.
The bespoke service exists and is a separate proposition at a considerably higher price.
The ownership question
Hermès acquired the business in the 1970s, and the arrangement that allows two separate companies to use the same name in different markets dates from that period. The London firm remains independent and family-owned. Neither business is the imposter. They are both continuations of the same nineteenth-century name under a split that is now half a century old.
Which product you are looking at
The range runs from Prestige (the house's Northampton-made Goodyear-welted line) through made-to-order on existing lasts to full bespoke made in Paris. The three differ by an order of magnitude in price and by a great deal in what is actually done by hand.
As with every large shoemaker, the useful question is about the specific model: where it was made, on which last, and by what construction. The name at this house genuinely does cover several different objects.
What Hermès ownership actually produced
The Paris business makes ready-to-wear and made-to-order shoes to a high standard, with the resources of a large luxury group behind the leather selection and the retail. It is not a bespoke house and does not present itself as one.
Read alongside the St James's firm, the pair is the clearest case study on this site of a name being worth more than the thing it originally named.
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 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 | €7,000–12,000 | September 2026 |
| Ready-to-wear oxfordAn 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 | €1,700–2,600 | September 2026 |
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.
01
Edward Green
Edward Green is a Northampton shoemaker, around since 1890, making top-tier off-the-shelf shoes with far more hand shaping and finishing than most factory shoes.
02
John Lobb (St James's)
John 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.
03
Berluti
Berluti is a Paris shoemaker, now an LVMH menswear brand, famous for colouring leather by hand in see-through layers so the surface looks deep and varied.
Picture credits 4
- 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
- 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
- Berluti rue Marbeuf: Photograph · Mirco Braccini · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 3.0