J.M. Weston

JM Weston was founded in 1891 in Limoges, France, by Édouard Blanchard, initially trading as E. Blanchard & Cie before later renaming first to The Ultra Shoes and eventually to J.M. Weston. The company has always been based in Limoges, a region with a long tanning and leatherworking tradition, and continues to operate a single factory there where all of its leather-soled shoes are made. In 1981, JM Weston acquired the Tannerie Bastin, a tannery founded in 1806 that uses traditional vegetable-tanning methods; since then it has been the exclusive supplier of sole leather for JM Weston's shoes, making JM Weston the only shoemaker to own its own sole-leather tannery outright. Each pair of shoes reportedly spends around eight weeks moving through roughly 200 separate manufacturing steps in the Limoges workshops, following traditional bespoke shoemaking methods. The house's best-known model is the 180, a penny loafer first introduced in the 1940s-50s era that became closely associated with the wardrobe of the French professional and political establishment, sometimes nicknamed the shoe of French power for its adoption by civil servants, bankers and politicians. JM Weston remains part of the Groupe EPI portfolio of French luxury houses.