Crockett & Jones

Brothers-in-law James Crockett and Charles Jones founded their Northampton firm in 1879 with a Goodyear-welted conviction the family has never revised: five generations later, Crockett & Jones remains family-run, and every shoe still leaves the same Perry Street factory the firm has occupied since 1897. Around two hundred operations per pair, eight weeks of making, calf from the best European tanneries and shell cordovan built in-house.

The range is the connoisseur's map of English shoemaking — the Audley oxford, Pembroke brogues, Chelsea boots, and the handgrade line's fiddle-back waists — sold through the firm's own shops on Jermyn Street and beyond, a retail estate few Northampton rivals match.

James Bond made the quiet firm famous: Daniel Craig's 007 wore Crockett & Jones through Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die, the sort of product placement money can't script — chosen by the costume department on merit. The family's formula is unchanged since Victoria's reign: proper shoes, properly made, repairable for decades.