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supercrap · 6 years ago

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Joan Chen and Vivian Wu for Madame Figaro April 2019 | Chen Chong 陈冲 and Wu Junmei 邬君梅

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supercrap · 8 years ago

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Review: Thursday Boot Company “Captain” Boot

I’m a fan of boots; both work boots and dressier boots. My favorite shoes are probably my ‘Stow’ boots from Tricker’s, which are a chunky wing-tipped country brogue. I got them for a song (and actually bought out the stock where I purchased them, so ended up making quite a bit of money selling them in addition to keeping a pair for myself), but they are generally prohibitively expensive. If you’re fairly familiar with this blog, then you know my style tends towards a mixture of tweedy sport coats, casual oxford shirts–with and without ties, jeans, and classic footwear of some sort (think Scotch-grain longwing, or split-toe derby). In the winter, I love to wear boots but find that my work boots don’t pair very well with the more professorial-looking upper half of my general outfit. That generally leaves me rotating between some suede chukkas and my Tricker’s. But now, these boots from Thursday Boot Co. have been added into the rotation.

They’re not quite dress boots, and certainly aren’t work boots, so they fit in perfectly with the more casual side of dressy that I tend to favor. When I was offered the chance to review a pair of complimentary boots from Thursday Boot Co., a little cursory research into the company revealed that they’d set a Kickstarter record at the time of their launch (is that the right word here? Is kick-off better? It feels weird writing ‘kick’ twice so close together…) for the largest capital-raising campaign for a fashion brand on its opening day. They seem to have taken that success and parlayed it into a regular ecommerce site where you can now just buy products that are in stock and ready to ship. I may be old-fashioned this way, but I much prefer this model to the one where you pay some money in advance and get a product some distant time down the road.

In any case, Thursday Boot Co.’s current offerings are a solid selection of some classic and very versatile designs. There’s the ‘President,’ which is basically the above boot without a captoe; the ‘Diplomat,’ which appears to be very closely modeled after Alden’s classic Indy boot; the ‘Captain,’ which you see above; the ‘Duke,’ a chelsea boot; and the ‘Scout,’ a nice looking 2-eyelet chukka (which also looks like it may be made on a slightly sleeker and more elongated last than the others, but I may be wrong on this). Thursday Boot Co. also appears to have a special limited-run series called ‘Black Label,’ which currently has a very handsome boot–the ‘Vanguard’–that looks heavily inspired by Viberg’s classic Service Boot. Thursday Boot Co.’s regular boots are priced at $199, their ‘Scout’ chukka is a very reasonable $149, and their Black Line ‘Vanguard’ is a fairly steep $425–though, to be fair, that is much less than Viberg’s price on their Service Boot to which this is clearly an homage.

There are a number of things that I think really stand out about the boots I received from Thursday Boot Co. The first is their solid pricing relative to other similar boots on the market (part of this is due to the fact that the boots are made in Mexico, rather than the US). The second is the quality of the leather on the boots I received, and lastly, the out-of-the-box comfort I’ve experienced with them so far. I’ve already mentioned the prices above, so let me talk a little about the leather.

Thursday Boot Co. seems to source their leathers from two tanneries, the famed Horween in Chicago, IL., and the lesser-known (to me at least) award-winning Le Farc based in Leon, Mexico. Apparently Le Farc was voted the runner-up for the best tannery in America (as in the Western Hemisphere, I believe) back in 2013, and is used by brands like Wolverine, Frye, Lucchese, and Tony Lama (the latter two will be very familiar to those of you who like quality cowboy boots).

The ‘Captain’ boot I chose comes in three colors, the ‘Natural’ which is made out of Horween’s natural Chromexcel, and Black and Brown, both of which are made out of Le Farc hides in a finish called ‘Thursday Chrome.’ I must say, I really like the brown Thursday Chrome that my boots were made up with. I have a couple of pairs of shoes made out of Horween’s standard brown Chromexcel, and the Thursday Chrome is much shinier, which is nice in giving the boots a slightly dressier look. When I asked why Thursday uses Chromexcel for the natural colorway, but not the brown or black, I was told that they were looking for a very specific tone and hue for their brown leather, and that Le Farc was great to work with in terms of helping Thursday Boot Co. go through the process of creating this unique leather. It’s a very thick and waxy pull-up leather, so the creases it takes on yield the nice lighter color beneath (you can see this process beginning in the toe box of my boots shown above). This loans them a bit of a rugged character I think, and I imagine it will only develop more character as time goes on.

What I may have found most shocking about these boots, however, is how comfortable they were right out of the box. Apparently this was fully intentional, and the boots feature some slightly unorthodox construction that may offend purists out there. Classic construction of a boot like this would feature just leather and cork, and perhaps a little rubber on the sole, but Thursday Boot Co. has added an initial EVA comfort strip layer just under the sheepskin that lines the interior of the boot (this is something generally found on sneakers, and the reason for the right-away comfort on these), under which is a corkbed midsole, and the whole boot is finished with a Dainite-style studded rubber sole. This construction makes the boots a bit lighter than you’d expect a boot of this size and style to be, which is both a little strange feeling at first, and nice when you have to spend a long day walking around in them. The shoes are still Goodyear welted, and can be resoled. As I’m not a purist, I can say I really like and appreciate the comfort afforded by the EVA comfort strip.

The fit on these is true to size (I’m a 10D on the Brannock device, and the 10s fit me very well), and the finishing on my pair (as well as a pair my colleague purchased after seeing my boots) was perfect–nice straight stitching, scar-free leather, no loose glue, etc. Though I received these boots for free for this review, I can honestly say that I would happily pay the asking price for a pair. If they release a wingtip brogue boot in the future, I will likely do just that. $199 (shipping inclusive) for a pair of Goodyear welted boots made out of top-shelf leathers that feature very clean finishing throughout is a very good price in this market.

I definitely recommend checking Thursday Boot Co. out if you’re looking for a boot that you can dress up or down for the wetter and colder months of fall and the upcoming winter. As an added bonus for those of you who are feeling a bit tentative, Thursday Boot Co. offers free domestic shipping and returns.You’ll definitely be seeing a lot more of these boots in my posts here in the next several months.

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supercrap · 9 years ago

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