The English shoemaker behind Prince William’s Top Gun slippers

Plenty about the Top Gun sequel has garnered anticipation, not least because Covid has consistently pushed the release date, which coincidentally finally landed around the time of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. At the Diamond Jubilee, we had Paloma Faith discuss both royal matters and her new album during the BBC's questionable coverage. At the Royal Windsor Horse Show this year, we had Tom Cruise introduce, for reasons only the cynical can decipher, the Royal Horse Artillery next to other celluloid luminaries like Omid Djalili and Martin Clunes.

The elision of the world of celebrity with that of the royals is not always smooth, or indeed wise. And yet a successful meeting of these two spheres did occur this week on the Top Gun: Maverick premiere’s red carpet when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge showed up, and show up is exactly what Prince William did. His customary undone jacket aside, he looked splendid. His jacket was a beautiful midnight blue velvet, which continues on his recent trend of smoking jackets on black tie evenings.

Matching this with a velvet pair of slippers is not just smart and bold, but also sartorially correct. He turned to Crockett & Jones for the job. Crockett & Jones, established in 1879, is not the most expensive shoe brand on the market but it oozes British craftsmanship and heritage; it is a favourite of Daniel Craig. The factory in Northampton offers a wonderful trip down memory lane, but at the same time, it takes that kind of heritage to know how things are done properly, not unlike the Windsors, you may say.

The slipper is meant to be a sensible and smart indoor shoe that did not wear out the floors or carpets or cover them in dirt. The wearing of the slipper and the smoking jacket was something that happened around the same time, although they were not developed in cahoots. The processes Crockett & Jones go through to make the slippers, with a set of paper patterns and fabric cut by hand as well as closing and lasting that is carried out by hand is not to dissimilar to how it was done when the company was established, and there are no plans to streamline this with mechanisation.

Embroidery on slippers makes all the difference. It ideally should be something sentimental or funny, I have my initials on mine for example, in case I forget. By having F-18s – the plane featured in the Top Gun sequel – embroidered onto his slippers, the Duke has managed to do both, and thus has made all the sartorial intelligentsia sit up and take notice.