London is littered with shoe brands that proudly display their royal warrants and tout pedigrees that stretch back for centuries. Horatio, which opened its first store within the Royal Exchange this April, is proudly not one of them.
The upstart shoemaker, launched in 2019 by two retail veterans, wants to outfit “borderline football hooligans,” financial-sector “city boys,” and Barbour-wearing aristos alike. Essentially, anyone willing to wear, appreciate, and perhaps most importantly of all, “batter” hard-soled footwear in a time of sneakers.
“I think the shoe space can be really stuffy,” Horatio co-founder Billy Prendergast tells Robb Report. “Even the more popular hard-shoe brands that are a bit closer to our price point are still trying to be Jermyn Street brands. Their language, the way they style and present it, is all very serious. And I think that was never really us.”
Prendergast met his co-founder Nicholas Walter in 2009, while they were both working at the now-defunct multi-brand retailer Present London. The two bonded over a mutual love of clothing and an idiosyncratic sense of style best summed up by what Prendergast dubs “the pub test.”
“If you can wear it to a pub and you’re not laughed out of there, you’re on the side of ‘Oh, that’s interesting, but it’s quite all right.’ That’s where we tend to sit,” he says.
Suffice to say, Horatio’s loafer-heavy range makes the grade. Its styles, from the beefy, Goodyear-welted Dartmouth loafer to the Italian-made Beaufoy bit to the storm-welted Norfolk derby, are all rooted in classic style. And while each is available in black or brown calfskin, they’re unafraid to get a little cheeky. Take, for instance, the bold Beaufoy made in blazing red suede with chestnut leather trim, the Dartmouth crafted with croc-embossed leather, or a white grain leather Norfolk with a chunky Vibram sole.
And while the brand was conceived as a footwear business, it has since expanded into apparel and accessories. It began with what Prendergast calls “interesting little things,” namely vintage MA-1 bomber jackets and some “crazy rugby shirts.” But while the latter were essentially found objects, Horatio launched its own-designed knitwear last fall, with cropped six-ply rollnecks that were soon joined by raglan-sleeved crewnecks, shaggy Shetland polos, and cricket pullovers.
If the sudden expansion into knitwear—which, with the exception of the English-made cricket pullover, is all knit in Scotland—feels a little random, that’s because it is. Rather than executing a slick multi-year plan to evolve Horatio into a head-to-toe retailer, Prendergast and Walter are simply making the clothes they want to own.
“We make the stuff we like, that we know sits well with the shoes, and that we want to wear as well,” Walter says.
It’s a level of personalization only possible from a label that may be described—at best—as a two-man band. Walter, who works on Horatio full-time, handles much of the creative work, while Prendergast, who holds with another menswear brand, moonlights on the business end. Both work together on product development and brand imagery.
“If I’m in a photo, he’s taking it,” Walter says. “If it’s him, you know it’s me.”
The same DIY spirit is present in the brand’s City of London store—winkingly referred to as a “shop for city boys” by its co-founders—whose “good bones” include a snaking spiral staircase and a mezzanine floor. Nevertheless, it has benefitted from the assistance of Walter’s wife Ella Boucher-Walter, a visual merchandiser who helped fill it with reflective silver surfaces and black leather to evoke an art deco feel.
For the coming fall season, Prendergast and Walter plan to further build out the knitwear collection and also expand into outerwear with a balmacaan coat. In the meantime, the focus remains on the shoes, which are on offer to city boys and non-city boys alike.
“It’s meant to be really accessible for people, and that’s the whole point,” says Prendergast, “We don’t care if you batter them or if you wipe them down when you get home.”
The most important thing, it seems, is that you wear them.
