Jones Bootmaker Boots, and How to Get the Calf Fit Right
Jones Bootmaker has been selling boots since 1857, which is long enough that the name stopped being a description and turned into a brand. Alfred and Emma...
Jones Bootmaker has been selling boots since 1857, which is long enough that the name stopped being a description and turned into a brand. Alfred and Emma Jones opened the first shop in Bayswater, and one of their early moves was selling ready-made shoes in three widths at a point when the alternatives were bespoke or badly fitting.
Pavers bought them out of administration in 2018 and the catalogue has stayed where it always was: mostly real leather, mostly classic shapes, priced like a considered purchase rather than an impulse one. If you are typing the brand name into a search bar instead of just typing boots, the fit range is almost certainly why.
“Everyone knows their shoe size. Almost nobody knows their calf measurement.”
How the calf fits work
Most knee-high boots come in one shaft width and you find out whether it is yours after they arrive. Jones splits several of its knee-highs into slim, medium and wide calf fits, and the Phoebe runs to four separate fits, so you are choosing the circumference of the leg as well as the size of the foot.
Measure the widest part of your calf sitting down, over whatever tights you would wear with them, and pick the fit from that. What most people do instead is size up the foot, which is why so many knee-high boots end up gaping at the top and slipping at the heel at the same time.
Jones Bootmaker knee-high boots
The rest of the range
Chelsea boots are the other thing they make a lot of, and the chunky-soled ones are the most useful thing in the brand for the next three months. The heeled ankle boots sit mostly on block heels at a height you can get across a car park in, rather than anything built for a taxi and a table.
The same shapes, other brands
This is where shopping across brands earns its keep. A riding boot is a riding boot, and if Jones has not got your size, your colour or your budget, the shape exists at half a dozen other labels we carry. The grid below is deliberately not brand-locked, so it will pull the nearest matches wherever they happen to sit.
What to wear them with
A knee-high boot has one genuinely good job in autumn, and that is closing the gap a midi skirt leaves. Knitted midi, boots pulled up under it, a couple of inches of leg showing at the knee and nothing else. It is warmer than trousers and it reads considerably more expensive.
Buying notes
Measure before you browse
Calf circumference at the widest point, sitting, in tights. Write it down. It changes which boots are even options, and it does not change between brands.
Leather stretches, shafts do not
A leather boot gives a little across the foot after a few wears. The shaft circumference is fixed by the panel, so a shaft that is tight on day one stays tight.
Black first, brown second
If this is the only pair you are buying this year, black does more work. Brown is the better second pair and the worse only pair.
Check the heel against your week
A block heel under two inches is a boot you will wear on a Tuesday. Anything higher becomes a boot you wear on purpose, which is a different and much smaller number of days.
Everything above pulls live from what our retailers are holding right now, so sizes and calf fits come and go faster than the styles do. If the fit you need is in stock, that is the version of this decision worth making quickly.