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christian louboutin shoes They hint at deep knowledge of Prince Charles' feet The Lobb site, in fact is plastered with a slide show of the prince's latest visit And then there's the reindeer hide. G.J. Cleverley & Co., one of London's top shoemakers, will cheerfully wrap your tootsies in 18th-century Yves Saint Laurent Glace Kid Leather Sandlas reindeer skin. The stuff was supposedly salvaged in 1973 from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of England. The hides were "remarkably well-preserved after two centuries of immersion in black mud," the Cleverley Website says. I didn't doubt Cleverley's George Glasgow Jr. for one minute when he told me the leather has "a unique smell." Nor was I surprised to hear that supply is tight. Glasgow, who frequently Yves Saint Laurent Grained Calf Leather Short Boots through the U.S. with his measuring gear, said bespokes made of the reindeer leather go for about $4,000, compared with $3,000 for regular leather. It's a lot of money -but it's a lot of smell. "It is a pleasant oak-style smell," Glasgow wrote in an e-mail. "These skins," he added, inching toward an olfactory reverie, "are the last known examples of leather made using an old-Yves Saint Laurent Heart-shaped Splint Slipper in Pink tanning process that combined willow bark and birch oil." I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Then it was time for a reality check. Could I get by without reindeer shoes? Probably. Was there something else out there for the old flippers? Almost certainly. And with any luck, it would be closer to home. Housed in a small building on a gritty street at the edge of New York's Chinatown, E. Vogel is a thoroughly no-nonsense operation. Jack Lynch and his crew keep their mouths shut and their fingers grimy. Prince Charles may never stop by, but it's good enough for Henry Kissinger, Denzel Washington and James Gandolfini. Count me in, guys. After the measuring of my feet, I told Lynch what I wanted: a pair of classic lace-ups with leather soles, the kind of shoes that had tortured me the most. Lynch recommended the blucher variant -the laces would pull together two pieces of leather subtly attached to the shoe's upper side, rather than cinching a V-shaped opening on the top. Bluchers, he said, would be the kindest to my feet. That was all I needed to hear. I told Lynch to build me a gorgeous pair of bluchers in dark-brown calfskin.