The battle of the billionaire shoes

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

In July it will be exactly 20 years since I saw my first pair of Loro Piana Open Walk shoes. It was at a regatta near Moscow on 1 July 2006, on the feet of a man dressed entirely in varying shades of sand, a palette that spoke eloquently of Loro Piana’s extravagant understatement. The shoes looked like laceless desert boots. I thought I was observing just another…