JM Weston, PAF, Auralee, Antonio Carlos Jobim
22.803
At 22.803 I bought my first pair of loafers from the JM Weston store in the Marais in Paris. I also decided to start this blog series, where I start every post with my age represented as a decimal.
My in-store experience was very good— my fitting was done by a salesman named Noir, who happened to be wearing the model I was looking to buy, the 180 loafers. He gave me some explanation on the types of clients that visited the store. An hour earlier I had visited `The Broken Arm` to retrieve a pair of paf x on cloudmonster 2s, so I had with me in-hand this pair of running of shoes when I entered the JM Weston store. I explained to him that paf was a korean brand that had just released a new collaboration— it turns out that many of his clients from Korea were brand owners themselves, although he did not specify which brands.
I asked a lot of questions about loafer maintenance, specifically as I wanted to extend the life of my loafer investment to its fullest potential. He gave a quick run down on leather and rubber soles and suggested that I get sole replacements around every three years. He also gave a demonstration on moisture cream application and then maintaining the leather with a horsehair brush. This convinced me to purchase their in-house moisture cream that was dyed black and also contained some amount of wax. I also decided to grab a pair of Weston shoe trees that were fitted to the size of the loafers I purchased. With the VAT refund applied to my purchase, I essentially zeroed out the cost of the shoe trees.
I figured the shoes might take up too much space in my luggage, so I requested to have the loafers shipped back home to New York. Noir explained that he would try to send the loafers under his name (as opposed to Weston), to help avoid some fees involving shipped products. However, he could not give his full guarantee that I would avoid having to pay taxes.
I first learned about the Weston brand from a fit pic of @k3nta_, who sported a yellow supreme knit in the image (maybe around March). I was disappointed to learn that the JM Weston store in New York had been shut down during covid— my visit to the JM Weston store while staying in the Marias was actually a complete coincidence. I was doing store research for brands I wanted to hit, and it just so happened that the store was located a block away from the airbnb I was staying at (it was not on my original list of stores to visit while staying in the city).
Some other significant things that occurred while I stayed in France (both in Nice and Paris)
At 22.794, I purchased the Auralee high count wool poplin blouson and high twist cotton silk viyella slacks from `The Next Door` as well as a copy of `Designing Design` from OFR
At 22.781, I randomly decided to buy a biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson from an English-only bookstore in Nice. I spent most of my five and a half hour train ride back up from Nice to Paris reading about Jobs and the frustrations of the folks attempting to work with him and appease his desire for marketing perfectionism.
At 22.775, I purchased an original copy of Antonio Carlos Jobim - Wave in decent condition from `Real Cool Trash` in Nice and another vinyl with just a single eight minute song by the D train from another store.
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