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By now, your vacation itch probably feels more like a full-blown rash. So if you expended your PTO a month ago and are sitting pretty at home, don't reach for the calamine lotion just yet: a proper pair of leather sandals can make you feel like you're strolling through a quaint village in some painfully picturesque European city, even if you're just dreaming about it in line at the bodega.
Already spent all your cash on a pricey international flight? No matter: top-tier, handsome-as-hell leather sandals don't have to run your bank account dry. Enter Gianluca l'Artigiano del Cuoio (hereafter “GLDC”) , a small-batch Florentine shoemaker that first entered the GQ orbit approximately one (1) day ago.
How, you might ask, did we stumble upon such a rarified gem? Well, that's where things get interesting. Because GLDC's artisanal wares didn't catch our attention in the window of an uppity boutique or appear to us, hazy and mirage-like, in a fever dream of exquisite summer shoes. They popped up on Amazon, nestled inconspicuously next to a litany of cursed algorithmic suggestions and janky Birkenstock knockoffs.
No matter their provenance, all great shoes start with great materials, and GLDC uses the cream of the crop: full-grain leather. Unlike top grain or so-called “genuine” leather, full-grain leather isn't sanded down or heavily processed to hide imperfections—it doesn't just yield a better-looking product, it yields a longer-lasting one, too.
GLDC also strictly relies on full-grain vegetable-tanned leather, or leather that's treated with all-natural ingredients and tannins in lieu of nasty metals and chemicals. Then the leathers are stained by hand in a range of gorgeous hues designed to age like top-shelf Chianti. Speaking of age: instead of using glue, which eventually dries out and can cause irreparable damage to your shoes, GLDC and its coterie of swaggy artisans stitch the all-leather soles by hand, quadrupling each style's shelf life in the process.
And that's not even the kicker. As you might imagine, shoes of this ilk typically cost a pretty penny. But in this case, you're getting all that impeccable, handmade-in-Italy quality for just…$120!? Yes, you read that right. We triple-checked the numbers and—short of phoning up Gianluca himself to make sure a secret zero isn't hiding somewhere—are pretty sure there's no tomfoolery going on here. Amazon, we misjudged thee. Gianluca, who owe you a bottle of Prosecco. Abbondanza!