 Hi, how are you going? Welcome back to my channel Bootlossophy and if you haven't been here before my name's Tech and in this channel I review and talk about boots. In today's video I'm going to review the Thursday Boot Company Wingtip Boot that they call, well, Wingtips. This is Thursday Boot Company's Wingtip Boot in a makeup that they call Dark Oak. You may have seen my video showing me unboxing these boots and if you haven't I'll put a link to that unboxing video up here and down in the description below. Now before we get any further you should know this was a factory second that is a below retail quality item. To quote Thursday's website factory second means boots that have minor imperfections but are structurally sound and are a quote slightly less than mid condition. If you watch my unboxing video you hear me remark that I couldn't really see the thoughts making it a factory second and about a year later today I still can't really see the kind of QC problems that would have made these factory seconds. But anyway the end result is that I bought them for US $149 instead of the listed full price of $235 US dollars. As you can see they are an elegant Derby Lacing Broke boot. I'll go into the construction materials later but this Dark Oak Upper with its pebbled and smooth leather panels and mottling effect make it quite a dressy boot to me. The dark colour, shiny leather, slim sleep design, the medallion of the toe, the all-islet lacing and the larger quarters the chisel shaped toe itself all create elegant lines that despite the Derby or open lacing system I think can be worn with a suit. Broke shoes, shoes and boots with holes punched through in a regular pattern and wing tips, shoes and boots showing this winged panel from toe to the sides of the event have a strong connection in history. Wing tips merely refer to the wing design and not all wing tips have holes in them. Brokes themselves are a 16th century either Scottish or Irish invention. I think that depends on how much whiskey you've had to drink. They were designed for walking through the countryside on marshy, boggy land. Eventually they came together as full brogues or full wing tips and nowadays what we call wing tips are almost certainly full brogues. That is they have this wing tip design and they have broke perforations. The perforations are functional rather than decorative at least they were in history. They let the water out as you tried through the bog so you don't end up with a boot full of water. That's really why especially in the UK they're sometimes still called country boots. In the 18th and 19th and even in the earlier 20th centuries a gentleman retiring to his country home for the weekend would go hunting and shooting involving traversing wet ground and therefore he changed into his brogues. And that's why in some circles people just don't see this as citified formal dress boots but in my experience that's completely changed in the latter half of the 20th century when old English boot makers like Trickers and Grenson and eventually American shoemakers like Flo Schaum and Ellen Edmonds made broke shoes and boots in darker dressy leathers. Even though some of these were dressier Oxford clothes laces they still looked far too dressy to wear in the mud and snow crawling after game birds. This Thursday version while keeping all the elements of a full bro boot provided dressier sleep profile. They make their wingtip in three colours. This is dark oak. They make a lighter tan brown called colour 77 and they make it in black. I think this particular dark oak is probably the most popular version of this boot because it will sell out from time to time on their website. They did make an earlier version that was more round-toed like the Ellen Edmonds Dolton but their current version has this chiseled toe with this toe tip that raises itself creating elegant overall shape. If you don't know who Thursday are, they were started in 2014 by Conor Wilson and Nolan Walsh two MBA students who identified a niche in the American boot market from their own personal problem of not being able to find a pair of boots at the right quality and at the right price that make the dress come service boot aesthetic. Already identifying that they wanted to leave grad school as entrepreneurs they put two and two together when they realised that they could make their own boots to the design they liked at a cost and quality they would themselves buy. Now Thursday currently has a line of boots and shoes made mainly in Mexico but with a small line made in the USA particularly in Vanguard. Using global market efficiencies in buying power and material sourcing they're able to make really good looking reasonable quality boots at reasonable prices where most of their boot lines sell for just under 200 US dollars. You do get what you pay for though. Many people complain that Thursday quality is not as good as some other makes they often make these comparisons to boots that sell for mid 300 to the 500 dollar range an unfair comparison in my view. I think if you want that superior quality stitching or superior source leather then you can pay that higher price but for 200 dollars you get really good quality for that price compared to most anything else in that under 200 to 300 dollar price range. Okay enough of a history lesson. Let's dive into the construction. Hey but before we do can I ask that if you're enjoying this review that you click on the like button below. I'd also love it if you click on the subscribe button. You can always unsubscribe at a later date if you really get sick of me. Click on both this like and subscribe buttons below will really help me to establish this channel and get YouTube to send out this video to more people who might like to learn more about boots. Okay construction. Let's start with the sole. The outsole is studded rubber. If you're familiar with boots you recognize that these look like day-night soles. Day-night is a UK company that makes rubber soles in particular this style of studded rubber sole. You'll find them or like these similar types day-night like under many boots because they're fairly grippy, they're comfortable and they have a sleek profile from the side. As you can see they replace the traditional dressy leather soles or thin rubber soles. They are thin and they don't look out of place on carpet or in the boardroom. This however is Thursday's proprietary version. In the past they've been complaints that they were too soft and sometimes led to chunks breaking off but they seem to have fixed that particular composition of rubber that they use. I'll talk about the comfort of wear later but so far I've had no problems at all really. The heel is a proper leather heel stack not cardboard or wood and it's topped by a rubber nailed on top lift with the familiar day-night like studs and this horseshoe shaped moulding. I can't see details of it on the website but I think this has a leather midsole between the rubber and the welt. It's thicker under foot than the Thursday captain anyway and it feels quite sturdy. Inside there is a cork midsole, a shank and a leather poron insole. Let's break that down. I'll talk about the welt in a minute but the use of a welt in the construction means that there's a cavity formed and this is filled by a cork filling on the inside. The ideal sole makeup is supposed to be a combination of cork and leather because both mould to the shape of your footprint over time to create a uniquely shaped and supposedly more comfortable footbed. The shank which is placed here is a hard piece of material in this case steel sometimes wood, sometimes leather, plastic, fibreglass and its purpose is to support the arch. Really it supports your foot when you put pressure down so that this gap between the ball of your foot and the heel doesn't sag down and push down and cause arch tiredness when you're standing around on it all day. The insole is the part that your foot contacts on the inside sometimes it's called the footbed. In this case like in many Thursday models if not even all actually they use poron which is a kind of memory foam on the inside. Some people don't like this and prefer the cork leather combination only but frankly I think it's great. It makes the boot feel totally comfortable straight out of the box. It's similar to slipping on a pair of new sneakers under foot that's the feeling that you get. Okay let's keep moving upwards. The sole is connected to the uppers using a 360 degree Goodyear welt construction. A Goodyear welt construction is where a thin strip of leather called the welt goes all the way around the edge of the boot. The uppers are tucked in and then sewn onto the inside edge of the welt right through the insole and all. The outside edge of the welt is then sewn to the mid and outsole straight through. You can see the stitching here on the edge of the welt and also here at the top of the welt going right through to the outsole. Sometimes you can't see the stitching under the outsole here. Don't panic. That may be because they glue the outsole onto the midsole after the midsole has been Goodyear welted. The best case in point are wedge sole outsole and sometimes on really expensive leather sole shoes they cut a flap all the way around the outsole, stitch through it and then fold the flap back and glue it down. On the other hand sometimes you can see the welt but it could be a false stitch either stitched or molded on just to look aesthetically pleasing but with no functional effect. Some cheap cemented sole shoes may do this. The big palaver about Goodyear welted shoes though is that they are eminently re-soleable. Once your outsole wears out, a good cobbler with a Goodyear welted machine can just cut through the Goodyear welted stitch, pull off the outsole which is also good for more added durability, stick another one on and stitch through the existing welt and hopefully through the existing stitch holes so they don't make a mess. In this way the stitching through the uppers themselves on the inside of the welt and the welt itself are almost untouched thus preserving the other stated advantage which is water resistance. Because there is effectively a welt barrier between the uppers, insole and outsole, water finds it harder to trickle into your sock. A Goodyear welt construction with all the extra material can make a boot heavy. But these despite the 2.7mm thickness of leather and lining combined they are only about 670g each, not the lightest but certainly not the heaviest. Let's keep going upwards. As you can see the uppers are made of two different types of leather. The smooth leather around the quarters and the wing tip panel and the pebbled leather around the vamp, the heel and the decorative strip around the eyelets. I don't know exactly where the leather comes from. It's not stated on the website but my best bet would be from Lafargue Tannery in Mexico where Thursday get many of their leathers. It's a full grain bovine leather, slightly corrected and smooth. It's not oily but it feels waxed and smooth exactly what you'd want in a dressy boot. It is firm and feels strong in hand but I wouldn't say it's an exceptional leather. The smooth leather panels have a mottled effect. Technically it's called chiaroscuro an artifarty term meaning light and dark or mottled. This is hand painted and considering there are eight panels of leather with all that stitching there's a fair bit of work here and a fair bit that could go wrong. Back to these been factory stackings. Still can't see what went wrong. There are seven eyelets, no speed hooks for that dressier look. It's a seven inch shaft so slightly taller than normal slightly higher than the six inch service boots so that adds to the elegant design. Inside it's fully lined with glove leather I have no idea what glove leather is other than I guess it has to be soft and supple but it is smooth to slide your feet into and results in that very satisfying plop when you push your foot in. The tongue is ungusseted. A big bug bearer mine. On my Thursday captains the ungusseted tongue on the right boot slips to one side until I took some somewhat drastic action. If you want to find out what you can check it out on my review of the Thursday captain I'll put a link up to above and in the description below. On these boots however maybe because of the thickness of the leathers on the lined tongue, even the tongue is lined or maybe because of where they sit in the taller shaft they don't move as much or even at all. The brogue perforations the medallion on the toe the pinking at the edge of these panels the stitching the details they're all pretty good. Don't underestimate how hard it is to punch and cut and sew by hand. Sure they use hole punching and cutting and sewing machines but these are still handmade boots in the sense that there is a human hand guiding where the machines cut and punch not an automated machine assembly line. The look and feel of the leather and the hand burn machine means I think a little bit more care than the conditioning and polishing department when you take care of it. So let's talk about that. The leather is not particularly soft but it is smooth, it's nicely waxed and it feels supple. There are no tough spots so no boot orders required I don't think just shoe cream probably. I've been using Venetian shoe cream it's basically my go-to for almost all smooth leathers really. I'll put a link below to where you can get some. I totally only use neutral in this case but hand burnishing and a Kiaroscuro mottling might get covered up if you use a brown cream or wax polish. For the same reasons I'd be very careful what you use to clean it with. Some soaps and cleaners may wipe off that hand burnishing. I'll just make sure that I brush after everywhere in fact it's slightly dusty now. It's not very likely in my use case scenario of office wear that they get particularly dirty so I just wipe them with a damp cloth I've applied some brown wax polish to the toes and the heel I mirror shined it a few months ago and I had to redo it again as it began to wear off. Look to summarise it's not a soft scratchable leather like chrome excel so I don't think you need to be too precious about it. Treat it like a tougher dress shoe leather. Give it a good brushing often wipe it down now and then and vsc to condition maybe a couple of times a year. As you can see from all my discussion previously about the leather and the style and the aesthetic I believe this is a dressy boot. The Thursday website shows models wearing these rolled up jeans of course as well as with a pinstriped suit trousers. I think you can dress them down because they are historically at least a country boot design and by definition more casual and relaxed. Shooting party more than dinner party. Think of relaxed tweed and corduroy and of course today's equivalent of jeans and chinos five pocket pants in brown or grey or black or just denim jeans. You could also take the traditional style guide and wear them with natural coloured corduroy or tweed trousers neutral colours wear sports coats with them they go well with those but ultimately I wear mine with a suit either navy or charcoal. Yeah I think you can go very business formal no problem. This dark oak can pair with as I said navy or charcoal as well as other neutrals like browns, tans, khaki green in very casual to smart casual to business casual to full blown business suit outfits. I think this is a very versatile boot and leather maker. Turning to sizing I measure US 8.5D or average width on a US machine. That's equal to a UK or Aussie 7.5 in a G width. However, most of my American boots are in US 8D most boot makers will say that they run large and to go half a size down from true to size. In the case of Thursdays I have a captain in 8 standard by the way that's one of the problems with Thursday. Many of your models come in one width only and where you can choose you can only choose between their standard width or their wide sizes. There isn't really anything between them. Anyway my captains in 8 standard after breaking was the perfect fit. However, I later got a vanguard in one of your rugged and resilient leathers in an 8 standard and it's still a bit narrow across the ball of the foot today. So I contacted Thursday customer service and by the way it's one of the most responsive around. I told them my fit in captains and vanguards and where I felt the pinch where I felt comfortable and they suggested I go true to size in these at 8.5. These wind tips only come in one width so these are 8.5. They're slightly long perhaps half a thumbs width but they feel good around the ball of my feet it is definitely a sleeker slimmer last in the captain I do need to wear thicker boot socks they are a teensy bit big for me to wear thin dress socks with but that's okay. They're not so big that they feel floppy or that makes me trip over the toe I think that at the end of the day I could have probably got an 8 but if I did even if it were a bit narrow I'm not sure it would have stretched as much as my Thursday Chrome captains this leather feels less stretchy. As a result they sometimes look long but I think that's an optical illusion and more of a European style feel about one. As they break in there was no issue at all apart from the thick or thick feeling sole that needed to be flexed a bit and my foot's flex point it felt totally comfortable otherwise. There were no hot spots sore spots the full lining really helps of course One of the keys about breaking in boots I think is that people may get boots at the wrong size or width. I think if you get the right size that's half the battle won As for the shock absorption and comfort on the foot that's where the Poron comes in they were exceptionally springy underfoot straight out of the box even today the sole feels thick and protected and mmm but very shock absorbing like a sneaker the arch support with that shank is ok not phenomenal but it is supportive overall I cannot fault it for comfort underfoot maybe in time with heavy use the Poron might break down as opposed to leather and cork midsole but that's a long way away from my use case in the office and let's face it I might never get there so right now comfort is pretty important to me now let's talk value at the end of the day it's listed at US $235 that compares to Beckett Siminon Oliver Cabell, Taft or Huckbury's House Brands none of which really cater to this dressy dress up and down style. Remember I'm valuing this boot not this brand it's more expensive than Thursday's own Captain model and less expensive than any Grant Stoner Parker's boot not the same style but cheaper than Red Wing if you want a sturdy quality comparison in fact to compare with really similar styles you need to look at Alan Edmonds or European makes like Trickers and so on all of them well over the $235 mark so you get what you pay for but do you get the quality of that price range? Well I don't see why not factory seconds that I think pass as first as far as I can see it is a difficult boot to make and I think they make it well is it worth it? Yeah I think so you know I got these boots because I saw them on the seconds page and I thought they looked good I wanted a formal business wearing boot that would go with a suit I used to have floor shine tinted brogue shoes that I wore with a suit in the 90s when we all wore the full suit in tie to go to the office and I wanted a boot to replicate that I think I got what I wanted with COVID shutdowns and work from home mandates every now and then in the last year I haven't worn these at anything like the normal frequency for going to work but every time I put on a suit I put either these on on my Blackbar and Williams Chelsea boots I feel that with these two boots in my repertoire that's my suit game sorted so there you have it my review of the Thursday Boot Company Wing Tip Boot in Dart Oak I hope you liked it and if so please give this a thumbs up on the like button and subscribe to my channel to make sure you don't miss the other reviews and the boot information that I'll be posting every week come on it's your weekly entertainment in this boot world right I'll see you again soon