Shoes are not the final puzzle to an outfit—at least not to Berluti. It shouldn’t be an afterthought because the distinction between a pair that’s worn for mere aesthetics to one that actually changes the way you walk is subtle, but anyone who has spent enough time around good footwear knows it immediately. A good pair of shoes seemingly disappears beneath you, becoming an extension of the body and without as much as a squeak, it alters your posture, your pace, and even the way a pair of trousers breaks.
For a maison that has spent more than a century obsessing over the relationship between leather, form, and the human foot, Berluti’s proposition is that your outfit begins with the footwear. All that you put on afterwards serve to bring out the personality of the shoes. At the heart of it, shoes are designed to help you move. And this season, it moves in boots.
While it might sound like an obvious choice for a maison whose history is rooted in bootmaking and shoemaking, Berluti’s boots are not the kinds you’d wear for protection (although we’ve seen some vintage versions that have certainly done a lot of that). Berluti’s boots, much like its range of footwear, occupy that particularly difficult territory between practicality and elegance, where something can be entirely functional without looking remotely utilitarian. The reworked Capri as well as the new Rombo and Alessio each approach that balance in their own way, and with plenty of personality, well, to boot.
To understand Berluti’s footwear-first approach, a brief history is necessary refresher. The Maison was founded in Paris in 1895 by Alessandro Berluti, an Italian craftsman whose training as a cabinetmaker informed his approach to the construction of shoes. His instinct was to treat leather almost as a sculptor treats wood: with an acute sensitivity to shape, proportion, and the relationship between an object and the body that inhabits it. There’s an irony to this craftsmanship approach because the real luxury of a Berluti footwear is often found in what you don’t notice, even if the patina is what has become a signature signifier of the Maison. The way a Berluti pair bends, how the leather moulds around the foot, and where the sole meets the ground are details that rarely make for a dramatic photograph. Yet, they determine whether a beautiful pair of shoes remains beautiful once you have walked in them for hours on end.
The Capri is one of Berluti’s established icons. It’s essentially a Chelsea boot whose proportions have been refined to produce an unusually slender design as opposed to the typical chunky feel of the silhouette. The upper is shaped from a single piece of leather that follows the contours of the foot, creating a continuous visual line. Berluti describes its distinctive plunging shape as being inspired by the dramatic slopes of Capri’s Faraglioni rock formations, hence the name.
The Capri’s single-piece construction is particularly effective because it allows the leather to become the design. There is no need for decorative excess when the material itself has this much visual presence. It also happens to be one of those rare boots that can visually alter the proportions of an entire outfit without demanding attention for itself. With a suit, its slender profile continues the clean lines of a a crisp pair of trousers; with jeans, it introduces a degree of polish that remains grounded; and with a more relaxed fit, it’s the perfect counterweight to volume.
For Autumn/Winter 2026, Berluti has reworked the sole with flexibility and comfort in mind. In other words, it exudes all the quiet characteristics of the original but feels better and is more adaptive than ever.
Inspired by the iconic Alessandro, Berluti’s Alessio has been evolving for roughly a decade, originally conceived as a response to changing ideas about how men dress. This season, the line makes a significant shift, introducing a Chelsea boot.
In the world of menswear, where everything is supposed to do everything, the Alessio Chelsea embraces the challenge of being versatile. It has the ability to tone down formal business attire, and dress up more casual weekend clothing. We get it, that sounds like conventional luxury copy, until you consider how useful the proposition actually is. A boot that can sit beneath a suit on Monday and a pair of relaxed trousers on Saturday is not merely versatile; it is economical in the best sense of the word—in the number of decisions it requires.
Ethylene-vinyl acetate (or you know, EVA) may not be the most romantic phrase in the fashion lexicon, but it is precisely the kind of technical intervention that makes sense in a shoe designed to be walked in. EVA is lightweight and flexible, and Berluti uses it here to create an all-terrain sole without visually overwhelming the Chelsea silhouette. The way that the Maison does it also effects a contemporary boot without looking conspicuously technical. Then of course, the elasticated sides make the boot seamless to get into. But then again, the Alessio Chelsea doesn't need to explain itself, it's just the way that it is, especially when you slip into a pair.
The biker boot has always been one of menswear's more entertaining contradictions. It began with a job to do: protect the foot, survive bad weather, and perhaps most crucially, stay on while riding a motorcycle. Somewhere along the way, it became a cultural uniform for men who wanted to look as though they had somewhere more interesting to be than wherever they currently were.
Berluti's Rombo takes that history and gives it a more cultivated upbringing, The new design—and dare we say, Berluti's boldest of the lot—is a mid-calf boot in Venezia calfskin, with a Goodyear-welted construction and protective, non-slip rubber sole. The silhouette's proportions certainly give it more presence than the Alessio or the Capri, bringing a tougher, biker-inspired dimension to the Maison's otherwise polished wardrobe.
The foolproof way to wear a biker boot is with denim, a leather jacket and a rugged expression that just exudes devil-may-care. Berluti offers another possibility: pair it with tailoring. Suddenly the boot becomes less about rebellion and more about confidence. A dark suit and a Rombo do not say the same thing as a dark suit and a pair of Oxfords. The Oxford respects the boundaries of the suit, but the Rombo quietly questions them. And that perhaps is a very Berluti kind of rebellion.
The Rombo is not about cosplaying to be a rugged ideal of masculinity, but rather, it's about having enough refinement to make ruggedness look intentional. The Venezia calfskin helps enormously with this by taking on nuanced colour and patina to turn what begins as a finished surface into something increasingly personal over time. On the Rombo, that creates an especially compelling tension between the boot's hard-edged silhouette and the almost sensual quality of the leather. It is the sort of boot that should get better the more you wear it. Which, frankly, is the whole point.
