Journal

Arques, Pas-de-Calais. Ten thousand inhabitants. A railway station, a handful of shops, a church. And a factory. Not just any factory: the largest tableware glassworks in Europe. The one that has kept the town alive for two centuries. The one without which Arques probably wouldn’t exist at all.

In January 2026, Arc France entered receivership. It isn’t the first time. It may not be the last. But this time, the question is no longer whether the company will pull through. The question is whether French tableware glassmaking will survive.

The sound is dull, regular, almost organic. A hammer on white-hot steel. Not one blow more than necessary, not one fewer. Inside the workshop, the heat is dry, immediate. The forge glows. The smith doesn’t speak. He strikes, turns the blade, strikes again. His gestures are six hundred years old.

Sakai, a city of 820,000 in Osaka prefecture, supplies 98% of the professional knives used by Japanese chefs. That figure, cited by the Sakai Tourism Bureau and echoed by specialist sources, is staggering. It means that in almost every starred kitchen in Tokyo, Osaka, or Kyoto, the blade that slices the fish, minces the ginger, or cuts tofu into translucent sheets comes from here.

The workshop sits in Victoria, at the far end of Vancouver Island. Not in a trendy neighbourhood, not in a loft with a neon logo. In an industrial building — plain, functional. You push open the door and it hits you: leather. Not the “leather” scent they put in candles. The real thing. Animal, tannin, grease. A heavy, almost oily air.

On a workbench, a hide of Horween shell cordovan. Thick as a paperback novel. Three and a half millimetres. Maybe four. Brett Viberg lifts it with one hand, bends it gently to show the grain. The hide resists, then gives way with a muted, dull sound. No cracking. Cordovan doesn’t crack. It rolls.

Argonay, Haute-Savoie. Three thousand inhabitants, a view of the Aravis mountains, a lake nearby. And a factory that has been making erasers and compasses since 1947. Not a spectacular factory. Not a listed site. A discreet industrial building, wedged between the mountains and the retail park, where people come every morning to make objects that everyone uses and nobody looks at.

In May 2026, this factory will close. Twenty-eight people will lose their jobs. Production will be transferred to Asia. And France will no longer have a single eraser factory on its soil.

A pair of Japanese selvedge jeans costs between €170 and €400 in Europe. That’s a lot. It’s also the price of a garment that will last ten years and belong to nobody but you — literally, since the fades form according to your body, your movements, your life.

But before reaching for your wallet, you need to understand what you’re buying. That’s what this guide is for.

Let’s be honest. Church’s, in 2026, is finished.

Not the brand. The brand exists. It has shops, a website, advertising. But the very thing that justified Church’s existence — an English shoe made in Northampton from real leather, at a price warranted by 250 stages of production — that’s been over for a long time.

Since 1999, to be precise. The year Prada acquired the house for £170 million. Since then, prices have soared. A Consul now exceeds €700. And the leather? On many models, it’s “Polished Binder” — corrected grain coated in plastic resin. Plastic, at the price of leather. The specialist forums aren’t fooled. The verdict is unanimous.

I’ve always wanted to publish a guide.

A real guide, on paper. In the tradition of Baedeker, Michelin, those objects you leaf through, annotate, slip into a coat pocket (and which I have the questionable taste of collecting). A beautiful object in itself, listing the brands worth knowing: the ones whose products last, whose story holds up, whose prices bear some relation to what you’re actually buying.

The paper guide is a dream of mine. The web is the laboratory. A fast testing ground where you build, correct, expand before committing anything to ink. The notes piled up, the spreadsheet grew, and the need has never been more urgent.