From the Spring 2006 catalog, a page showing the classic wallet: This retails for $295. It's the simplest style, so ones with a little more flair are priced a little higher. I see you just got a Tod's wallet...very nice!
On a different note, where is Tod's based? I know they make their products in Italy, but I thought that the actual company was British. I mean, who's ever heard of an Italian named Tod?
Very true!! Here is the explanation, from http://www.departures.com/fa/fa_0306_tods.html Excerpt from above article: ....Della Valle comes from Le Marche, the central eastern region of Italy known for its rolling hills, its Verdicchio wineand its shoes. Until Tod's went exponential in the eighties, the Della Valle family business differed little from the hundreds of other small footwear manufacturers in the valley between Fermo and Macerata, providing employment for 35,000 people. Grandfather Filippo was a humble cobbler: His old wooden workbench and tools are displayed shrinelike just outside the prototypes section of the Tod's plant here. It was Diego's father, Dorino, who expanded the business, setting up a small factory that made women's dress shoes for, among others, Azzedine Alaïa. Dorinowho, at the age of 81, rides his bicycle around the gleaming white corridors of his son's new headquarters and is the only person allowed to smoke in the buildingwanted his eldest son to be a lawyer. Diego, however, had other plans. After bailing out of academia at 23, he flew to New York and organized a presentation of his father's shoes at the Hilton. Orders followed from several department stores that promptly relabeled the shoes as their own. But Della Valle wanted more. He wanted his own brand. To do so, though, he needed a name and a big idea. The name J. P. Tod's (later shortened to Tod's) came from the Boston phone directory. The big idea came in the form of driving moccasinsworn by the likes of the late Fiat head Gianni Agnelli, who made the shoes part of the effortlessly relaxed Portofino playboy look he cultivated. For Della Valle, as for many young Italian entrepreneurs of his generation, Agnelli was a role model and an inspiration: "He was a symbol of luxury for usand he was always surrounded by beautiful women." .....
omg- I had no idea! Thanks! You read Departures too? I love that magazine! I always "borrow" it from my grandparents because they get it for free with their AmEx.
No, I'm not familiar with Departures, though it certainly looks interesting! I happened to google Tod's and Michael Roberts a few weeks back and found that article. (Michael Roberts is an artist who is doing some illustrations on selected Tod's bags and mocs.) It was so informative and I recalled it mentioned how the Tod's name came about.
