After Alfred and Century, dunhill closes its Heritage in Motion trilogy with Davies, a hybrid shoe where the vocabulary of the garage meets that of the leather workshop.
In 1904, Alfred Dunhill founded Motorities, a line dedicated to the first British motorists, with a simple promise: to supply “everything but the motor”. Gloves, goggles, coats and accessories combined practical innovation with exacting craftsmanship, principles the House still claims today, one hundred and thirty years after its founding in London in 1893.
Davies, third chapter of the Heritage in Motion series after Alfred and Century, transposes this philosophy into footwear. The piece reinterprets the traditional driving shoe in the form of a hybrid sneaker, where leather craftsmanship meets engineering borrowed from the vocabulary of the automobile.
The vocabulary of the garage, transposed to the foot
The quick-release retractable lacing system echoes the precision of on-board mechanisms. The amber rubber sole, injected with the AD cypher, carries the visual signatures associated with the House. A sole with so-called micro-Hobnail studs provides grip, a detail dunhill presents as distinctive of its automotive-inspired creations.
Two materials are offered: hand-patinated calf leather and Italian suede, both lined with nappa leather. The weight of the construction has been reduced thanks to lightened internal components, while a low-profile sole allows the upper to flex with the natural movement of the foot. An anatomical, plant-based insole completes the whole, designed to develop a patina over time rather than remain fixed in its initial state. Davies is offered in four colourways, chocolate, whisky, tan and black, designed to accompany a tailored outfit as well as a more relaxed look.
A house that thinks in collections of uses
dunhill presents itself as the first British luxury menswear house, with a history spanning more than a century. The brand has built its current offer around a complete wardrobe, from tailored ready-to-wear to leather goods, including small jewellery objects and so-called hard luxury pieces. Davies fits within this logic: an everyday object, the shoe, reworked from a technical vocabulary generally reserved for the rarer pieces of the House’s archive.
The launch, scheduled for Thursday 30 July, is accompanied by a film and a series of photographs presenting Davies as a direct extension of the Motorities philosophy: a functional design, conceived for its time rather than for the archive itself. By linking Alfred, Century and now Davies, the Heritage in Motion trilogy builds a continuous narrative in which the early automobile becomes a repertoire of forms for objects that are no longer motorised in any way.
By linking the garage of 1904 to today’s workshop, dunhill is less an act of nostalgia than of method: the same exacting standard applied to a new object, until Davies, in turn, wears its leather enough to tell its own story.
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