Whether you buy into the Freudian dream theory that our innate fear of falling relates to our succumbing to sexual impulses, or the biblical interpretation that it predictably foreshadows our divergence from the path of righteousness, the fear of tumbling, falling, and succumbing to the harrowing grasp of gravity is a very real and deep rooted fear in man. Even more so when inclemency blitzes in the urban environment and when the sidewalks of New York are transformed by snow, slush and black ice into shoals so treacherous that slipping and sliding face first down the grimy pavement seems a foregone conclusion. How many of us have left the house with the wrong pair of dress shoes only to spend the day searching in vain for traction on the precarious cobblestone streets of London or Paris, as the pounding incessant deluge transforms once resplendent bench made double monk-strapped finery into sodden deformity? But how can we reconcile style and function, in particular as winter unleashes its wrath upon the city? Surely there must be some form of gentlemanly footwear that would have us equally well heeled in the most elegant dinner party, as well as the most ferocious snowstorm?
Now there is and it gives The Rake great pleasure to unveil the very first product we've created in collaboration with two of England's finest artisans, the Gaziano & Girling for The Rake Urban Commando Boot.
The primary mission of The Rake e-commerce is to bring into being objects that should exist but for some reason do not. Our goal was to reach deep into our collective consciousness and make manifest a boot so priapically elegant that women are in real danger of spontaneous pregnancy by being in its mere vicinity; a boot that combines all the deft, seductive design acumen of two of the greatest contemporary shoemakers, Tony Gaziano and Dean Girling, with a sole so forthrightly and predatorily aggressive, that wet pavement, patches of ice and puddles all cower in fear from its primal bad-assitude.
