How to Tie Dress Shoes Berluti Knot Method

I'm Kirby Allison, founder of The Hanger Project. And here at The Hanger Project, we love to help the well-dressed take care of their wardrobes. In today's video I'm going to teach you how to do a new knot called the Berluti Knot. I was taught how to tie the Berluti Knot by a good friend of mine in New York who is a huge collector of Berluti shoes, both he and his father. They both use the Berluti Knot. He's seen several of our videos. He also learned the Parisian Knot from us. So every single morning you know he asks his son, you know, what type of knot would you like me to use when tying your shoes? The Parisian Knot, the Berluti Knot, or just a normal knot. And so every day his son kind of chooses. They mix it up and it's a lot of fun. What I like about the Berluti Knot is that it is probably the strongest of the double knots here. Even stronger than the Parisian Knot. So you're going to never have to worry about your shoes coming untied. Another thing that I like about the Berluti Knot is it actually lies flatter than the Parisian Knot itself also. So it's a little bit more symmetric. It lies a little bit flatter. It's a more difficult knot to tie. But if you can really learn how to do this I think it's not well worth learning. Now the story with the Berluti Knot is that Olga Berluti, who of course is the famous Parisian shoemaker that really invented the whole entire notion of patinas on shoes. She had an aristocratic customer that claimed that their family had been tying their shoes using this particular knot for a very long time. And so you could always tell if someone was a part of this particular aristocratic family because they all tied their shoes using this particular knot. Now that client taught Olga Berluti how to tie this knot and then she since has taught a lot of people how to tie it also. And so now this is known as the Berluti Knot. Now the Berluti Knot is such an effective knot you really just need to twist your laces once and then what you're going to do is you're going to form two bunny ears okay. One in your left hand and one in your right hand. You're going to take the bunny ear and your left hand and take it over the right. Right. And you see I've got these kind of over one another and then this is the tricky part. You take the right bunny ear with the end to the left lace to the left bunny ear and then you just take all of this and you just kind of have to push it through that hole and pull it through. Right. So I've literally taken all of that and wrapped it through the hole. Then I'm left with the left bunny ear which is on the right side and then the end the other end and I'm going to take all of this and again you just kind of grab it all together and then you just take it with your finger and you're pushing it through the hole. Right. So if you look at the knot like this before you tie it together you can really see why this is such a strong knot. I mean you've got things looped all over in here. So now in order to tighten this pull just pull through the bunny ears and as you can see it just cinches down perfectly tightly. You've got two parallel loops and what I like about this relative to the Parisian knot is it sits a little bit closer to the actual vamp or the laces and it does a better job centering itself. Sometimes with the Parisian knot it kind of is offset one side or the other and you really can't fix that. But with the Berluti knot it's easy to get it to be perfectly flat down and it really looks smart. And again you know as with any type of advanced shoelace knot it's all in the subtlety. Again you know very few people will ever notice that you tied your lace differently than they did that morning. But you know you did. And it's just that extra 5 to 10 percent that really just differentiates you from everyone else. So let's do this again. So in order to untie this you have to pull with both laces. It comes undone quite easily. OK. So I've got two bunny ears here right. I've got the bunny ear on my left hand and the bunny ear on my right hand. I'm going to take the left bunny ear over the right and then on my right hand I'm going to kind of pinch those two together where they intersect. Right. And then I'm going to take the everything on the left side and basically just push that through the center of that knot in the hole. And this is kind of the most difficult awkward part. But anyway you just pull it all through. Right. And then as you can see it's all through that knot and then everything that's left on the right just grab it all together and then just thread it back through that hole. And there we go. And then just pull it tight. Just pull on the bunny ears. Right. So don't pull on the actual lace ends. Pull on the bunny ears and it comes right down. OK so let's do this one more time. So I'm going to loosen the knot. You've got your two bunny ears. The bunny on the left side with your left hand and the bunny ear on the right side on your right hand. So you're going to take your left over your right and then kind of pinch the two with your right hand where they intersect. And then you're taking everything on the left side and you're just pushing it through the center of that knot where that hole is and you just thread that through. OK. There's really no secret to doing that. And then you take everything that's on the right side and you're just going to push it all the way through. Back that through that hole. OK. And then you kind of see how everything's threaded through. Again I think this is a great example of kind of really illustrating why this is such a strong durable knot is because look at how everything's twisted around. Now this is the secret. So at this point you're not going to pull everything. Instead let go of the lace ends and just pull the bunny ears tight and you get a perfect Berluti knot. OK so there we are. Here we are on the right shoe we've got the Berluti knot. You can see it lies a little bit flatter a little bit more symmetric than the Parisian knot. Now both are great knots. You know it's fun to kind of mix it up. Now when compared to the Parisian knot I think the Berluti knot is a little bit more difficult and awkward to learn. But once you get the hang of it it actually comes quite easily. So I'd encourage you to just continue to practice. You know sit there you know try to tie your shoes a few times. Come back to the video. You can watch it in slow motion by adjusting your YouTube playback speed. Please take a moment to visit hangerproject.com where you'll find the largest and most comprehensive collection of dress shoe laces available anywhere in the world. We have them in multiple links and in multiple styles and several styles that are really unique just to the Hanger Project. So take a moment visit hangerproject.com. Remember you want to replace your laces often and always before they break. So you know I always like to say you know inspect your laces whenever you're polishing your shoes and if they look like they're a little bit worn kind of at the eyelets or where you tie the knot always replace them before they break because Murphy's Law always has it that your laces break at the most inopportune moment and of course whenever you're without an extra pair of laces. Our sovereign grade laces are made to exceptional quality in Northampton which is the center of kind of the British shoemaking world. They're excellent quality. So if you buy a sovereign grade lace you know it's going to be strong. It's going to look great and it's made well. And if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments section below. I get back to all those questions personally. And please take a moment to visit hangerproject.com where we have the largest and most comprehensive collection of luxury garment care and shoe care accessories in the world as well as other accessories for the well dressed. And while you're there subscribe to our newsletter and receive updates on new products and promotions as well as a weekly digest of all of the videos we publish here on our YouTube channel. If you like this video give us the thumbs up or better yet subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications so that you can learn whenever we publish new videos. I'm Kirby Allison founder of the hanger project and we love helping the well-dressed take care of their wardrobes. Thanks for joining us.