 I have been long after this boot by Parkhurst. This is their Delaware model with the brogue cap toe. I've been looking for a pair of these for a long time and I'm really glad to get this pair done in Marriam's horse butt in Dark Brown. How you going? Welcome to Bootlossophy and if you're new here, my name is Tech. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I'm filming on, the Wodget People. Now today I'm taking a look at Parkhurst's Delaware boot in Marriam's Vegtan horse butt leather in Dark Brown. I have been after a pair of Delaware's for a long time. I started looking at them after Andrew had finished making them and so I've got quite a few pairs of Allen boots and Richmond boots but this one with the brogue cap toe is called the Delaware. And it's been missing from my Parker's collection so I'm really glad to get this one. Editor Tech here. I forgot to add when I was recording the impressions video that when I bought these boots, I addressed them to Dale at Dale's Leatherworks so that he could actually do a review before on sending them to me. So this is actually the second of two reviews. Go and look at Dale's Leatherworks and you'll be able to see his unboxing video of these boots and then so this runs on as an initial detailed impressions video. Enjoy. So as I said, this is Parkhurst's Delaware boot. Parkhurst have basically two designs for their cap toe boots. Their plain toe boot is called the Allen. The plain cap toe boot is called the Richmond and this one with the brogue cap toe detailing is called the Delaware. This one is made from Marriam tannery, the Italian tannery's Vegtan horse butt leather. So it's actually quite firm in temper and a little tricky to break in because of that firmness, particularly in the backstay area. If you take a look at the design, it's a fairly simple cap toe service boot design. You obviously have the cap toe and the vamp piece attached to the tongue. You have two quarter pieces and then you have a single piece backstay that covers the heel counter and goes up the back. So fairly standard. The hardware is sort of antique brass, five eyelets and three speed hooks. These are the sort of bent over speed hooks. The hardware has been pressed very nicely so that there's no scratchy bits, which often happens. It's on a low block heel, leather stacked with a Ridgeway style outsole and a top lift. And I'll talk about that when I talk about construction. Now let me talk a little bit about Parker's brand. Started by Andrew Savisco, a former financial analyst in 2018 and Andrew discovered his love for heritage style boots. And in particular, until COVID came along and basically shut down all his suppliers in the US, really wanted to make his supply chain inherit within the US. As I said, COVID really struck a pretty fatal blow because his factory shut down and a lot of his local suppliers shut down. Through some luck and introduction from his other factory partners, he was introduced to a Spanish factory in which he now makes pretty much all of his boots, although he is exploring some avenues in Portugal as well. If you wanna have a look at Andrew's journey, including some of his troubles, go and check out my interview with him up here. Andrew builds his boots on two lasts that he designed himself, the 18 last, which kind of disappeared off his catalog about three years, four years ago, and the 602 last, so-called, because that was the serial number of the landing ship tank that his grandfather served on. The 602 last graduated into a slightly roomier 602 last when he moved to Spain, and then the 602M last, which is even slightly more roomy around the toes, but we're talking two millimeters, gives you a lot of comfort in these modern builds. But they also give you a bit of room, which I'll talk about when I'm talking sizing and comfort. So let's talk about my first impressions of the construction of these boots, and as usual, I'll work my way from the bottom up. Here's a very interesting point. This looks like a Ridgway sole from the UK brand Ridgway because of the swirls and patterns that you get on that sort of boot, but this is actually a proprietary sole, especially made for Andrew's boots by a Spanish manufacturer. Now, the reason why Andrew had to get these specially made is that what he's found is that brands like Vibram and Ridgway and other branded soles don't actually fit his last, which is a combination last, being quite narrow in the heel and the waist and quite wide in the ball of the foot before it comes back down into the almond toe. And what he's found that I think in the larger sizes, 10s and so on, the positioning of the studs in the sole itself did not match his last, so they get a little bit skew-ifty. And in particular, the Ridgway sole was guilty of that. So he's had to design and get made a Ridgway-style sole with all the whirls, but in a positioning that suits his last, and that's really interesting. So obviously, from the bottom coming up, the construction is a good year-well construction method. Now, what that means is there is a piece of leather in a strip that goes all the way around the boot, so it's a 360-degree good year-well. On the inside, the inside of the welt is sewn to the insole and the turned-in uppers. And then on the outside, as you can see here, it sticks through the outside of the welt all the way through to the bottom of the insole. And the advantages of that it is water-resistant because there are no stitch holes that go from outside to inside. There's like two stitches, one staying on the inside and one staying on the outside. The second advantage is that it is recraftable or re-soleable. So when the sole wears out, all you have to do is, all your cobbler has to do, is to cut the stitches, remove, peel off that rubber outsole, glue on a new rubber outsole, and then re-stitch it again through the outside edge of the welt. So you're never actually touching the inside of the boot unless it seriously needs re-crafting. This case, it's a split-reverse welt. And you can tell because of the raw edge of the rubber that's out of the leather that's been pressed up against the boot. A storm welt, which looks similar, is actually where the ridge that you see here is actually carved into the welt and then pushed up against the edge of the boot. What I really like about this is the way that the edge of the sole is stained, but not the top of it. And that's natural so that when you're actually standing and particularly in the sun, this turns out a very dark chocolate brown with that light natural contrast on the edge, which I love. In terms of construction, it's, look, it's structurally very sound, but you can quite easily see the joint of the welt. Now, in many cases, Grant Stone is a top example of this. Oak Street bootmakers as well. They do make sure that the welt edges, the two ends of the welt that meet, are skyped nicely and then fit it very nicely so you can hardly tell that there is a joint there. Parkus has always had this rather rough and ready work booty made for function style construction. So I don't find this unattractive at all. I quite like it. And it's made in such a way that you know that this is built like a rugged service boot. Quite different from, say, the Grant Stones, which has dressier versions of this type of boot. Looking at the heel construction, there are several layers of leather stacked up there before you put on the top lift. So that's really quite solid. And then if you look at the edge, I would say four to five millimeter thick leather midsole. So there's quite a lot of leather under there to work with. Inside the boot, if you think about it, this welt creates a sort of barrier on the outside of the boot. So it creates a cavity on the inside of the boot. That's filled with cork in this case. And inserted into that cork in this junction here is a steel shack, which gives you support so that when you're standing, it doesn't collapse down into this gap. And it also gives you a bit of torsional stability when you're walking on rough ground. So all of those things are fairly traditional ways of constructing a boot. If you start moving on up, the uppers are made from Merriam tannery out of Italy. This is their Vegtan horse butt. Now, horse butt is actually the layer of leather that's on top of shell cordovan, which is a membrane. Shell cordovan is split from the horse butt. And in some cases, if you look on the inside of horse butt, you can see bits of shell. Like this is really smooth with some swirling sort of colors in here. In this case, it's not. It's a sweaty, rough out feel to it. So the shell cordovan has been properly split away from it. In terms of temper, it's actually quite stiff. I've only worn these for maybe four days. And I'm telling you, it's kind of hard to break in, particularly this shaft here, which when you're pointing your foot forward to walk, kind of is so stiff that it digs through your heel. The actual flex of the boot is not so much of a problem. And it flexes just at the right place at the ball. If you keep coming on up, the tongue is semi-gusseted, as all Parker's tongues are, up to about the last eyelet. So theoretically, it's pretty water resistant up to that level if you splash through a puddle. As I said earlier, the hardware is very nicely backed so you don't get any scratchy bits on the tongue, which is fairly thick leather in itself. The stitching, I mean, that broguing on the cap toe is really nice. It's a very finely detailed punching through to get to the broguing. And the stitching, two rows of stitches in one row, is very nicely, very cleanly stitched. All through the boot, the stitching on the backstay, the quarter panel, the collar and the lace edgings, very clean, very precise, absolutely nothing wrong with it. Now to sizing. I spoke earlier about Andrew's evolution of his 602 last to a 602M last, which was initially created by him to last his Chelsea boots and to last his Niagara Mocteau stitched boots. That gave a little bit of extra room in the ball of the foot. So he's now, I think, primarily using the 602M on pretty much all of his models. And so this is no different. If you are familiar with Parkhurst's 602M last, to me, it's one of my favorite lasts because it grips at the heel. I think starting at a B width or even a C width somewhere around that, it's a similar sort of narrow width at the waist. And then it opens up to an E width at the ball of the foot before it closes down again in the arm and toe. So to me with D width, but slightly duck feet, that really suits me as a last for a boot. The 602M, I find a little roomier. So when I wear these in my usual size, I do find that they're a better fit if I wear thick socks. I am not 100% sure and at the sort of cost of posting things backwards and forwards between Australia and the US, I'm not game at coming down another half a size. Where I stand with sizes is I'm an eight and a half US in the Brannock device, in a D width. And I usually wear size eight in a D width in most boots. So this is a size eight. Parkhurst do make some wider sizes, but not in every model. And to me on the 602M last, this eight D whereas the old 602 fits me absolutely perfectly is just a little bit roomy through here. So I do find that if I'm wearing a 602M last boots, I will have to wear thicker socks and I'm not game enough to come down a half a size. Andrew doesn't recommend that anyway. It's weird because if you actually measured it as Andrew has, it's really bigger by about like two millimeters at the ball. So perhaps it's psychological, I don't know, but I swear it feels wider. In terms of comfort, there's so much like real leather and cork on the inside with a leather sort of comfort glued in insole that this is a really comfortable boot. And I love the Ridgeway sole for comfort. The Ridgeway sole is quite grippy and it doesn't pick up any dirt like Commander's soles where the, what would you call these the valleys? In Commander's sole boots, tend to be quite narrow and they pack dirt and mud in them. With the Ridgeway with these sort of wider sort of valleys, I find that you can walk through mud and then when you get home, simply just tap them or knock them off and you don't track mud through. It doesn't pack into these grooves as easily as on a Commander. So I really love them. And they also give, because of the compound of the rubber, just enough shock absorption to be comfortable yet sturdy enough that you feel you're not squishing into rocks and feeling every corner of rock or stone or whatever. So comfort, I'd give it top marks. I do have to say though, and I said it earlier, the temper of this Vege 10 horse butt is pretty stiff. It creaks a lot like all Vege 10. You can hear it just as I squish it. And you can hear the layer of a captoe on the lining lever. So like all Vege 10, it does squeak, but it is stiff, it is tough. You know, three or four days, two or three or four days of wearing, that's not a break-in. I'm gonna have to wear these for a good couple of weeks, I think before it softens enough that it's not the edges are not digging into my Achilles tendon, even though everything else is reasonably fine. It's, I find it's this bit that's really hard to break in. Zero heel slip because this fits me perfectly. And to value, this particular pair sells for, I think it's 488 US dollars at the time of recording. So it's nearly 500 dollars. Now the other Parker's boots are in the low 400s. So this one sells for a bit more. And in this territory, it compares to Truman boots and people like Grant Stone are $100 cheaper. But I do want to point out that Mariam Vege 10 horse butt is not a cheap leather. And you can tell why if you put these on. They're very sturdy. The Vege 10 itself, I think gives it a fantastic tenage. All in all, this price range of 300 to 500 is a really tricky, highly competitive price range. You have boots in the low 300s. You have the high 300s like Grant Stone. A lot of the other Parker's models are in the low 400s. You get the mid to high 400s from Truman. You get the high 400s from Oak Street bootmakers. I mean, it is a fairly packed price range. The Parker's, though, I think comes in really nicely. There are variations in price because of the different uppers used. And you can understand that. But what they do give you, I think, is a well put together package. So in that sense of being really well constructed, being really well designed, really terrific last, the construction and the materials, all natural leather, all natural cork, good rubber, et cetera. I think they come together as a pretty good package. So there you go. I hope you like this review. It's not an unboxing, even though these are very new. One of the things about Parker's boots is that they do change their makeups very frequently. And what's frustrating for a boot reviewer is if I come back in three months time, if I do an unboxing now, and then I come back in three months time and I do a full review, by the time I come back in three or four months, Parker's might not be offering this anymore. So instead of doing an unboxing and then a later full review, I thought I would do a really detailed first impressions now. And if they're still offering this in three or four months time, after I've been wearing this well enough to know how it wears in, I'll bring you that other one. So I hope you like this video. You know what to do. And if you haven't subscribed, please do because it really will help me grow my channel and reach out to more people. And that really then helps me to create more content. So click on like, click and subscribe. And until then, take care. I'll see you the next time.