Goodbye Old Boots

An argument against purchasing re-badged shoes was brought home to me last week when the strap on my old Peal buckle boots snapped.

You may know that Peal is a sadly defunct shoemaker whose name and lasts were acquired by Brooks Brothers when Peal stopped trading about forty years ago. The shoes are made by other makers and sold only in BroBroClo stores. The rub is that when they need re-making, you have to know who made them or you're out of luck. Brooks is no help as they seem principally intent on making customers believe they have their own factory busy sewing shoes somewhere in Northampton, and their shoes have only the Peal name on them.

One of the benefits of paying exorbitant sums for welted leather shoes is that they last practically forever as long as you don't do something awful to them. When they are sufficiently worn, you return them to the maker where they are re-soled, repaired and otherwise returned to as good as new condition for a price that's around half the cost of a new pair. And, if they are brown, they have the additional benefit of ten or twenty years of patina.

My boots had decades of patina but I tried tracking down the maker to no avail (I had another pair of old Peals re-made by C&J some years ago), and the cost of having them re-made by a third party is more than the cost of new boots. Fortunately, John Cusey of the Ask Andy About Clothes forum happened to call my attention to Leather Soul's Alden Cigar Shell Cordovans pictured to the left.

The advantage of cordovan for boots is that it's the least porous leather known, and that is a big plus in rain and snow. So I expect that these Aldens will provide more effective service than my old buckle boots. But, nice as they are, they wouldn't have been necessary had I originally bought boots that I could have had re-made.