The Rochester ‘Wolverine’ Claw Slash Boot
Rochester ‘Wolverine’ Claw Slash Boot
Jeffery~West
By Guy Sangster-Adams
Licentiousness and lycanthropy walk hand in claw with Jeffery~West’s Rochester Boot ‘Wolverine’, which, with the scars to prove it, tells of the perils of treading the dandified line between respectability and rascality in the light of a full moon.
The Rochester last is named after John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, an infamous libertine of the Restoration Era. He was a poet, satirist, courtier, and member of the boisterous ‘Merry Gang’ (a group of predominantly aristocratic writers and wits).
Samuel Johnson wrote, "he blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness."
In his most famous poem, A Satyr against Mankind (1675), Rochester compares mankind to the animal world, and finds man wanting. Jeffery~West’s Rochester last is long and phenomenally slim, extending to a point which encapsulating its namesake’s wit. The claws slash through to the quarters of the ‘Wolverine’ boot, exposing liquid silver bullet-esque slashes underneath, evoking the dreaded feeling that your own fatality lies beneath the surface.
“Which is the basest creature, man or beast?
Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,
But savage man alone does man betray.”
- A Satyr against Mankind, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester.