 Hi there. How are you going? All right? If you're new here, my name is Tech and this is my channel, Bootlossophy. I come to you from Wajik country in Perth, Western Australia and I recognise the traditional owners of this land and the elders and leaders past and present. Today, I'm taking a look at these classic Mokto work boots, the Redwing 875 Moktoes in SB Foot Tannery's Auro Legacy Leather. If you're into heritage boots, this will be an iconic boot whether you like it or not. This is the Redwing Model 875 classic Mokto work boot. The first thing that should strike you is the bright orangey oily waxy leather that they call Auro Legacy. The second most obvious thing that smacks you in the face is this thick white wedge sole. Then the third thing that calls out to you is the chunky toe box. A Moktoe with a stand-up ridge caused by sewing two pieces of leather together at the edges of the van. It's a six inch boot, so-called because it measures six inches up the shaft, with an open or derby style lacing system. The aesthetic is clearly a work boot, but it's also stylish because of the unique turned up Moktoe that harkens back to American mid-20th century modern style and architecture. Because of that 20th century aesthetic, it's a favorite boot of hipsters today. Now, I'm not denigrating that style, but I'm just pointing out that these do go particularly well with tight skinny jeans, suspenders or braces and a vest or waistcoat. Not my style, but you can see why they go, especially if you think mid-20th century modernism. But that's not all you can wear them with, of course. I think they can be a reasonably versatile boot, except that some parts of your wardrobe may be cut out of it. They are a casual looking boot, so obviously business office wear is pretty much out. I think what I call smart casual is also potentially out. By smart casual, by the way. I mean non-suited wool pants and a button-up shirt with maybe a smart blazer. Nope. Anything else though, anything in the casual range, I think is fine. I think you can wear these boots in any non-office situations, going out to meals and casual restaurants, doing your chores around town, working around the house and yard, going for a drink with the boys. They are fine with chinos and flannels or button-down Oxford shirts and polo shirts. You can wear them with any kind of jeans and any kind of denim, and in fact any jeans color other than denim as well, from brown to black. The orange color makes a great statement if you wear all black and they pop on your feet. I call this a mock-toe. If you don't know what that is, a mock-toe is short for moccasin-toe, named after First Nations American moccasin shoes because of the U-shaped stitch here, that's a feature of the moccasin shoe. While there are a number of mock mock-toes, where the stitching is for show, like the old and indie boots, in this case this is a real mock-toe, where the vamp is made up of two pieces of leather, the top of the vamp and the sidewalls, and they are sewn together at the top of the sidewalls with that U-shaped stitch. The classic mock-toe work boot design pairs the mock-toe uppers with a wedge sole, as you see here. Red Wing actually invented the mock-toe boot in the early 1950s, basically this very same boot except with an 8-inch shaft. Originally, they were designed for hunters and farmers. The wedge sole allowed hunters to creep up to prey silently without catching their heels on tree roots and stuff. Farmers could get all their comfort in them, and the design gave them comfort against the elements. Since then, as well as becoming a fashion boot, they've been used by blue collar workers in construction and other industries because of the toughness, the comfort, and the protection. When technical work boots started appearing in the 2000s, old-style heritage work boots started to lose out to these cheaper, technical boots with padding and waterproof and breathable man-made uppers. As U.S. heritage-style boots started to become popular in the U.S., and importantly following in Asia during the early and mid-2010s, Red Wing recognized this, and in that sort of time period, they moved this line from their work boots range and created a heritage line range. A version of this remains in their work boot range, but I think all they did was they added a 10 to the name, the 10875, and then added things like padded insoles and so on. The Red Wing Shoe Company was founded in 1905 and based in Red Wing, Minnesota, in the upper Midwest United States. The state's history involved pretty intensive agriculture, and the geography included substantial forests, so you can see the design focus on farmers and hunters for this boot. They serve as a counterpoint to Red Wing's famous iron ranger, which was designed for the iron miners in that state's iron ore fields in the north of the state. Red Wing is a big company. They turn over around 570 million U.S. dollars a year in sales, and they employ about 1,600 people. In 1987, they became a vertically integrated company when they bought SB Foot Tanning, a tannery founded in 1872, so that they now tan their own hides as well as own the factories that make the boots, as well as the retail stores in America, at least, that sell their boots. Their size is such that they sell all over the world, and especially in Asia, countries in Southeast Asia and Japan in particular, the hipster fashion trend made Red Wing's a huge international brand. Red Wing actually made an enormous range of work boots and lifestyle boots under different brand names other than just Red Wing. Red Wing brand products are organized into work and heritage styles, and while some of their work boots are made outside the U.S., their heritage boots, like these, are still made in America if that is important to you. Let's take a look at the construction of these boots. We'll start at the bottom and we'll work our way up. The most obvious thing is that these boots have a wedge sole, so-called for obvious reasons. Rather than have the usual sole and heel, it's all a one flat piece that looks like a wedge. Here's something you probably didn't know. Wedge soles were invented by Italian designer Salvatore Ferragamo. Yup, the founder of that fashion brand. He first designed the orthopedic wedge heel in as far back as 1936, primarily for women's shoes. You'll still see them today as cork or wedge shaped rope aspedral shoes for women. The less high heel versions gained popularity because of their stability and arch support. Your arch is supported because the elimination of that gap between foot pad and heel, so you stand on a full bed of rubber. I can't find anywhere any discussion of wedge soles transferring to men's footwear before Red Wing started making the mock-toe boot. So I guess someone at Red Wing got the bright idea first. One of the reasons they may have gained popularity since then, so I've read somewhere, is because they make your boots look like basketball high tops, and they can be extremely comfortable to stand in all day. I don't know who makes these particular wedge soles. They could be Vibram because they do have a similar blown rubber Christie wedge sole. But these are bad for the Red Wing logo, so I think they could be proprietary as well. At any rate, like the Vibram Christie wedge sole, they're not crepe rubber, as some people say. Crepe rubber is actually pretty much raw rubber. At the rubber plantations in Malaysia and in South America, the liquid latex is taken to the processing centres actually on the plantation, acids and other chemicals are added to the latex to solidify them, and then the congealing mass is run through a roller or a French crappier to roll them into thin sheets for transportation. Crepe rubber soles are pretty much made directly from these thin sheets and look like those rough soles you get on the clouds' desert boot. These are actually called blown rubber soles. The raw rubber is processed at a factory, chopped into small pieces, made back into liquid form, and then blown through with air bubbles rather like a fizzy drink, and then it solidifies into moulds creating the shape of these zig-zag patterns underneath. These wedge soles are glued to a thick, hard rubber insole, about two mills thick. That's why you can't see any stitching underneath. But before that, the rubber midsole is stitched to the welt as part of the Goodyear welt construction. The welt, which is a narrow strip of thin leather, here it's about four mills thick, runs all the way around the edge of the boot. The inside edge of the welt is sewn to the inside of the uppers and the outside edge of the welt is separately sewn to the rubber midsole. Then the wedge sole is glued on, protecting that stitch. Because the Goodyear welt construction features a stitch that joins the welt to the uppers and a stitch that joins the welt to the midsole, there's never any direct stitch holes that go through all the way through the outside of the welt sole directly inside the shoe. This means that they're more water resistant and say, blank stitch shoes where that's done. This also means that they can be re-sold or re-crafted when the soles wear out. All you do is peel off the rubber wedge sole, and if everything else is undamaged, just glue another one on. At worst, if the midsole is damaged, you unpick the stitches, remove the midsole, and sew on a new midsole. The point is you can do all this without even disturbing and potentially harming the uppers. Inside the boot, there's a cavity formed by the welt going around the outside edge, at least as deep as the four mills. That's the thickness of the welt. That cavity is filled with a cork filler here. Cork is used because it's breathable and also because it molds to the shape of your foot as you're waiting the boots compress the layers inside. On top of the cork layer, Red Wing uses a thick leather insole, in this case about 5mm thick. That's pretty substantial. That's glued on top and forms the footbed that you actually stand on. Staying inside the boot, it's lined with leather in the toe box and the vamp, and at the sides. The lining, which is also about 1.5mm thick, extends along the sides and following the curves of the stitching of the quarters. I have to say I was refreshingly pleased by this leather lining. On Red Wing's iron ranges, the lining is only a cotton canvas. The quite thick leather lining going up the sides creates a strange feeling for me. It's not uncomfortable, but I can feel the edge of it pressing against the side of my arches. When the boot was new, it did actually hurt a bit, but then calmed down once the boot was broken in. There is a leather stiffener in the toe box around the side walls at the tip of the toe box there to give it shape and to keep that shape. Nothing worse than a mock toe with a collapsed toe box. In the heel, there's an internal thermoplastic heel counter, meaning it's on the inside, I don't know if you can see it, and it's covered by a piece of rough-out leather. The shaft and the tongue are unlined. The tongue is fully gusseted. It's gusseted right up to the second-last eyelet. It's not a bellows thumb, that is, it's not designed to fold over, but even so, the full gusset definitely will increase water resistance. There are seven nickel eyelets, no speed hooks. They're not backed. Just star-press into the back against this backing leather at the edge of the tongue that's stitched in and used as a reinforcing backing for the hardware. The top of the collar is rolled, and a thin piece of brown leather is put on top of it. You can see this is a real mock toe. The mock toe stitching shows the edges of two pieces of leather. On my boot, the joining of the two pieces is excellent. You really have to kind of prise it apart to see that they're actually two pieces. The stitching overall is really quite good and precise. As usual, at the quarters, there's the Red Wing Puritan triple stitch with a contrasting middle white stitch. Red Wing's Puritan sewing machine stitches the three lines of stitches at the one time, drawing the thread through a vat of wax as it does so. The machine's so old that only a small team of people know how to fix it, and Red Wing employs all of them. The rest of the stitching also utilises the contrasting white thread in places. This double stitch at the heel pocket, for example. The leather is interestingly not that thick for being so tough. The tongue is just over one millimeter thick. The leather used for the uppers is about two mils, a little over two mils. And yet you never feel that it's soft. I mean, it's supple, but it feels that it will protect your feet against all kinds of knocks and cuts. The Leather's from SB Foot Tanning, a tannery that's now owned by Red Wing. It's been around since 1872, and Red Wing bought them out in 1987. According to SB Foot's website, their leathers are floated in massive wooden drums with tree oils, tanning agents and dyes. This is an oil-tanned full-grain leather. That means the surface, or grain side of the leather, is not finished or buffed. And apparently no pigment is used during the finishing process, which is meant to bring out the natural colours and marks of the hide. They say that it will continue to process. Read, it will patina beautifully. And as it ages, it will bring out colour variations and character. What you end up with is a supple but strong leather. Like all mainly veg tanned leathers when new, it's pretty stiff, but it becomes much more supple with wear. Being oil-tanned, you also get a pull-up effect. And it's full of oils, so it repairs and brushes out easily. I have lightly conditioned these with a leather bar from an Australian family company called Artisan's Son, made of natural Australian products like eucalyptus oil and lanolin from sheep fur. The leather is so strong and oily that it mainly just needs brushing. How often you condition these boots will depend on how you use them and what you use them for. On the one extreme, you could be in construction and splash these boots with wet cement, grease, construction dust all day. On the other extreme, you could be wearing these irregularly as a nice fashion boot. If you wear these every day as a work boot, I highly recommend at least cleaning them down with a wet rag every week, if necessary give them a good saddle-soaping every couple of weeks, followed by some conditioning and a good strong brushing. What you need to do is to get the gritty dirt off because that's what will eventually, microscopically damage the leather. The oiling and conditioning will help to replenish the natural oils that you wash off, either on the job or through cleaning and saddle-soaping. If you wear these not very regularly as a fashion boot, just keep them clean and give them a good brushing. They have enough oils in themselves to stay healthy and you only need to condition them if they feel dry to the touch. For the rest of us, somewhere in the middle, like me who put them on, or maybe three or four times a month to go out on social occasions to go to work at an office or to work in the yard on weekends, I think maybe look them over after everywhere to wipe off dirt and brush them and maybe look to condition them a couple of times a year. For me, I do sometimes use these as work boots to work around the house. Once I wore them when I dug out a section of the garden to put in a four-meter bed for my wife and another time I wore them to tear down and rebuild the pagola. The gardening was shocking because they got black with wet clinging soil, the carpentry not so much. On both occasions, I saddle soap them, then some boot oil and a conditioner and a lot of brushing. I keep mentioning brushing. When new, the leather doesn't look all that shiny. It has quite a matte oily effect. After conditioning, the leather doesn't look that shiny but take my word for it. If you brush them really hard, the leather is so full of oils that it really does shift them around and you will get to see the variations of the color and some high spots of shine. What conditioner would I use? I'd stick with red-winged products. Avoid the mink oil if you don't want this leather to darken and use instead their leather cream which has neat foot oil in it. You can also use Big Four and you can use Feebing's Pure Neat Foot Oil as a boot oil for suppleness and waterproofing. I'll leave some links below to where you can buy these products. And if you don't have a good horsehair brush, I'll leave all links below. You should get one now. By the way, some of these links are affiliate links. It won't cost you a penny more but if you need the products anyway and you buy using my links you'll help me out and get me like I owe you. Rich 3% commission. Now let's turn to sizing and fit. They don't quite fit the same as their Iron Ranger boots. The Iron Ranger is built on red-wings number 8 last and these 875 mock toes on their 23 last. A last is the foot shape mould that the boot maker stretches the uppers around thus ultimately forming the shape of the boot style that you buy. Not only does this look different from the Iron Ranger because of the mock toe versus the cap toe but the actual shape of the foot shape is different. To me, these in the 23 last fit a little narrower than the Iron Ranger. I am pretty aware all the time of the sides of the boot at the toe box in particular and as I said earlier at the arch where that stitch is. I'm also aware that the toe box being with these raised walls is roomier than the Iron Ranger and the toe length is marginally longer. Nevertheless, I have both of them in the same size 8D and I don't think I went wrong there it's just a different last. So my true US size as measured on a US brand new device is an 8.5 in D width. Most American heritage brands even the newer ones like Truman and Parkhurst run about a half size large so I usually wear a US 8D in my boots. I take an 8D in Iron Rangers which fits pretty well and I take an 8D in these which fit okay. I'm a little less comfortable in these. I would not as some people in the comments in some of my other mock toe boot videos have told me I would not go another half size down. And these I have about a thumbs width between my toes and the end of the boot and I am conscious of the size where my knuckles are. If I size down even if I also went a half width up my feeling is that the boot would be too short. I had that disaster when I experimented with my Thurrogate mock toe sizing. So if you take advice from people about sizing please ask them what other sizes in other boots they take and see how that fits with your sizes in common models. If they say they have one or two boots in their life well how can I put this? Be polite but don't listen to them. Even better go to grail.co that's G-R-A-Y-L-E.co That's a website with an ever increasing database of people's foot sizes and an algorithm that will predict your foot size in a particular model based on loads of other people's experiences It works for me. Now having decided I had the right size how did I find break-in and comfort? I was fully expecting to be brutalised and have peeling blisters everywhere but actually no. There was a break-in period characterised by getting the leather to be not so stiff and by the sole sufficiently flexing so that it didn't feel like I was walking with a hard piece of something strapped to my feet. That just took maybe two weeks of constant wear but at no time apart from that stitch digging into my arch did I feel anything could be described as hurt. I had zero heel slip other than as caused by the stiff sole initially. Once again I think that's due to nailing down my right size I think I would have suffered if I'd gone down another half size Now though just after a year's wear they are pretty comfortable I could wear them all day but I will admit to something Are you ready for me to blaspheme in the eyes of the red-wing faithful? Here we go For comfort I prefer my Tharagut 6 inch Mokto boots It's true the Tharaguts tumble soft leather the I think softer TPU wage sole and the dual density removable foam pad inside the Tharaguts they make them feel like a pair of sneakers These are comfy but they feel like heritage boots you don't forget that you have them on but anyway this is a review of the red-wing Mokto's not a comparison video but that is a thought though if you want me to do a comparison between all my Mokto boots and I have six now let me know in the comments below Here's where I talk about price and value These are listed in Australia at 528 dollars you can buy them here I believe in the US they sell for around 300 to 350 US dollars you can hunt around and get them for less on Amazon I've seen them for under US 300 dollars in fact for those of us outside the US Amazon may be a good place to buy them if you search carefully and at different times they come and go especially if you're an Amazon Prime member because they may offer free shipping and free returns I'll put a link to an Amazon item below I'll tell you a secret too I bought these new in the box from eBay they cost me Aussie 350 dollars including shipping from an Australian guy who just bought the wrong size online and couldn't be bothered to fight the shipping costs and freight companies to send them back so they are popular enough that you can scout for bargains Are they worth US 300 to 350? Are they worth Aussie 500 plus? Well firstly I don't think they are worth Aussie 528 dollars for another 60 dollars you can get pair of RM Williams the difference in finishing and ultimate quality if however you can buy them and ship them in for around US 300 that translate to mid Aussie 400s I'd consider them at that price they are better built than the thorough goods yes despite my take on the comfort factor they are sturdier than any Blunstone workbook the leather is great and the natural materials like leather and cork footbeds great value and they look good any more than US 300 and unless you're a die-hard Redwing fan or you need another icon in your collection I'd think about it there you have it guys I hope you enjoyed this review of the Redwing 875 Classic Moptoe Boot it's my personal opinion for sure if you liked it, don't forget to click on the like button below and also click on the subscribe button especially if you don't want to miss all the other reviews and brand and boot comparisons that I will be bringing out take care guys I'll see you soon