 G'day, how are you going? If you're new here, my name is Tech. Welcome to Bootlossophy, my channel all about boots. In this video, I'm going to review my pre-loved Alden 403 boots in Chromic Cell, otherwise known as the Alden Indie. This is the Alden 403 work boot in Brown Chromic Cell. This style by Alden is also known as the Alden Indie, but technically the real Alden Indie is the 405 style made of brown calfskin leather. Why is it called the Indie? Well, if you haven't heard by now, this is the boot worn by Harrison Ford in all the Indiana Jones movies. The story is that in his previous life as a carpenter, he wore these boots as a work boot and when he was picked for the role, he rejected the costume designer's choice of boots to wear as the exploring archaeologist. Reputedly a pair of red wings and he insisted on wearing these in the films because of their comfort. These are second hand, bought off eBay nearly a year ago. They were in really good condition with some wear on the soles and the heel, but everything was in really good nick. The Alden 403 was first brought out in the post-World War II years as a work boot. Because of Alden's history involving the manufacture of orthopedic shoes, it was comfortable to stand around in all day, sturdy and the flat cork sole allowed you to work in construction and walk in and out of the building without dragging in mud and sand. At the time Harrison Ford was a carpenter in the 1960s and 70s, this was a carpenter's boot along, I guess, with boots like the Red Wing 875 mock toes and the Thurrogut mock toe boots. It speaks of the quality and style of work boots in those days when you compare them to the rubber padded Gore-Tex and nylon fabric monstooths of today. This is technically a mock toe. It has this U-shaped stitching along the edge of the vent. It copies the stitching on the moccasin shoes of First Nations North Americans, which is why it's called a mock toe short for moccasin toe. However, in this case, it's a mock mock toe. The stitching does not stitch together two pieces of leather, like real moccasin shoes or like the Thurrogut or Red Wing mock toes. This mock toe stitching actually just puckers the single edge of leather at this point. I think it's probably just decorative, but there may be a structural or strength reason like stretching or something. If you know, let me know in the comments below. As a result of the mock mock toe, it's quite a sleek and elegant boot despite the fairly wide sole. Unlike the Red Wing or Thurrogut mock toes, the sidewalls are not steep cliffs to climb, but a smooth slope for the eyes to meander over. Made of smooth chrome excel rather than the Red Wing and Thurrogut oil tan leathers, it's also pretty versatile. You can see that while it may have been made as a work boot, it can easily be switched over to casual wear after a hard day's work putting up house framing. So for Dr. Jones, it's a perfect boot to wear when lecturing in class, wearing a tweed suit as well as in the desert or jungle, kicking Nazis in their private parts. So you can wear it as a work boot in construction. I wouldn't, though, particularly as it costs six hundred US dollars these days. But more practically, you can wear it with a less formal suit, as I said, tweeds or some other material with a texture. You can definitely wear it as a business or smart casual boot. They work well with wool pants, say, or moleskin trousers or chinos. On top, you can wear a button up shirt for a bit of formality, maybe with a blazer. You can add a non matching waistcoat to change it up. If you wanted to make it less business casual, it would pair quite well with an Oxford cloth button down and some jackets like leather jackets or bombers. Honestly, think of Indiana Jones. You can wear the indies on any neat occasion from going to the office to date night. From going to the mall or a day out with friends. I guess you can wear them with jeans. I mean, I see no reason why not. But I hasten to add that these in Chrome Excel or the four or five in smooth calfskin are not rugged casual boots like Iron Rangers. Before I talk about construction, I'll just touch on the Alden New England shoe company. So Alden was founded in 1884 in Massachusetts in the US by Charles Alden. For whatever reason, he seemed to have started the company at a great time for shoe making with industrialization of the new Goodyear welting construction method, helping to make productivity gains in shoe making. Demand for good quality boots seemed to soar with the opening of the West and so Alden prospered. The Great Depression in the 1930s hit everyone, but Alden survived. As time went on and more and more companies sought cheaper places and countries to make shoes for less. Alden seems to have made the decision to stay in New England region of America and instead of competing on price, branded themselves as a company that made high quality dress shoes and specializing in orthopedic and medical footwear. Alden is the only New England shoemaker that's left of the hundreds that started out at the same time and remains a family owned business. Recently, they had to withstand and survive a catastrophe. It's come to light that their former CFO, Chief Financial Officer and bezel Alden of about 30 million dollars between at least 2011 and 2019 when he was found out and then terminated. He has since been found guilty and sentenced. Apart from the notoriety, this incident speaks loads about how much the company must have amassed in reserves for this to go on for at least eight years without running into financial trouble. Apparently, he was only discovered not when the company ran out of money, but when the owners wanted to create a trust fund and wanted to transfer the reserves to that trust fund. Thirty million dollars, that is a lot of six hundred dollars pair of boots. Anyway, let's turn to their construction. First of all, the uppers are made from Horween's famous Chrome Excel. Chrome Excel is a full grain combination tanned leather. It's been around since 1913 or 1914. So it's not a new kid on the block. It was actually developed originally for mechanical users as engine seals. Leather was preferred because the leather breaks down more gradually as opposed to a synthetic seal, which just suddenly failed. Chrome Excel leather is first chrome tanned, pickled to preserve using chromium salts. The hides, which look blue at this stage, are then re-tanned with mainly vegetable extracts and tannins. The chrome tanning makes the leather soft and supple and provides durability. The veg tanning makes the leather sturdy. It makes it easy to form into shapes and it makes the leather look good as it ages. Then the next stage is hot stuffing the hides with a secret formula of oils, waxes and greases. The hides are impregnated with these liquid forms of oils and waxes in a very hot steam process. This gives the pull up characteristic of the leather and makes it self-healing to a degree as you can rub out scuffs and scratches because the oils continue to reside in the leather and can keep moving around with the heat and pressure of your fingers. The process takes 28 days, so no rushing this quality product. In this boot, it's a medium thickness about two millimeters thick with a full leather lining from toes to vamp to shaft and under the tongue, beefing it up to over three millimeters overall. This feels sturdy rather than tough, but it remains supple when you wear it. As I've said earlier, the mock toe stitching is a faux mock toe. It pucks the leather for effect rather than so two pieces of leather together. The toe is lightly structured. The heel counter is internal and is covered by the lining. Outside, there's a single strip, back strip up the shaft to protect the stitch there. The tongue is lined, as I said, but it is un-gusseted. My right foot did the usual thing it does, and somehow made the right tongue slip all the way over to the right. I think the Chrome XL tongue is thin enough that even with the lining, it still slips about. I fixed it by cutting a slit in the tongue to pass the laces through. You can get a cobbler to put a short stitch to one side to prevent it slipping. The hardware is five brown eyelets and four so-called speed hooks. That's nine things to pass your laces through in a six inch boot. I'm used to maybe a seven eyelet boot, and sure enough, this means that the eyelets and speed hooks are small and old and gives you thick, flat wax cotton laces. This boot is not easy to lace up despite speed hooks. And apart from lacing up, it looks really busy down there. Inside is a leather insole, and then under that is a cork filling. Inside the cork is a steel shank that stiffens the boot underfoot, providing arch support and stability. That cork filling layer fills the cavity caused by the Goodyear welt. A Goodyear welt is a strip of leather or other material that goes around the perimeter of a shoe. The inside edge of the welt is sewn to the uppers on an insole. The outside edge of the welt is sewn through the midsole and attaches the outsole. In this case, it's a 270 degree Goodyear welt, meaning that it goes around 270 degrees of the boot. The heel portion is glued, sewn, and nailed separate from the welt. If you think about it, putting a strip of leather around the edge of the boot will create a cavity inside that strip, so the cork filling fills that cavity. Apart from just filling it, obviously the cork will provide some shock absorption. The midsole, the sole piece between the cork filling and the outsole here, this very thin piece, is leatherboard. Leatherboard is made of shredded chips of leather, compressed and then made into a sheet. Think of chipboard or MDF and carpentry. There's a bit of controversy over this. Why doesn't a $600 boot use real leather? I don't know because it's not a $700 boot, or maybe it's the reason the company had a huge cash reserve? Anyway, under that is a cork-nitral sole and at the heel, a leather heel stack and a rubber top lift. Cork-nitral is a rubber compound with chips of cork mixed up in it, soft enough to be comfortable underfoot, and it seems to me durable enough. To me, where I don't have to walk in snow and ice, it's grippy enough and it definitely has the advantage of not dragging any mud and sand and dirt into the house as you come in and out. Overall, bearing in mind I bought the second hand, I think QC is pretty good. I don't see any problems with the leather creasing badly or showing any loose grain, and I haven't seen any issues with the stitching. Just one thing though. When you stitch the good your welt, you generally stitch the outsole on, and then you sand the edge so that you smooth out the shape of the outsole. In this case, it looks remarkably like it became very close to the stitching when they sanded it. Is this carelessness in the sanding? Or is it really good sanding to enhance that sleek elegance? I'll leave it up to you. Now, leather care. Chrome Excel is pretty easy to take care of. Brush regularly, especially around the seams and the welts, not just to move the oils and waxes around, but also to make sure that you regularly brush off the minute dust and sand particles that, over time, could cause deep scratches and create weakness in the leather. Some people new to Chrome Excel are sometimes horrified when it scratches and scuffs, but the best way to fix this is two-fold. First, you use your finger and just rub at the scuff, which will eventually disappear. Second, don't see this as your more bought, dressed shoe with highly polished, corrected leather. This boot will patina, that means crease, change patches of color variation, scuff, and look used. You may not believe me, but that's one of the beauties of this leather. Also, if you're new to heritage boots and Chrome Excel, I wouldn't polish it very much. I guess you can, especially if you want a very formal boot to wear, but polishes, either wax or cream, will have a high wax content that will coat the leather and make it feel more waxy rather than that natural and breathable leather. It's an oily leather, Chrome Excel, so it shouldn't need much conditioning, but if you decide to condition it now and then, perhaps because it feels dry or it's been through mud and water, my go-to for smooth leathers is neutral Venetian shoe cream. It's cheaper than for Sophia, that's the top quality product, and for me, it's not a huge difference in the finish. I haven't, but I've also seen others use Big Four. Both will condition the leather with penetrating oils, with very little silicon and just a touch of wax. So, the leather will be conditioned and you can brush it to a reasonably glossy glow rather than using a waxy polish. I'll put a link to both products below. Bearing in mind these are second hand, I can't fairly talk about breaking them in. They are comfortable, though. I feel that the leather-cork-leather combination underfoot gives me a lot of comfort without needing any squishy foam or poron. This is Alden's true balance last, apparently their widest last. It's got a big fat heel width as its base. It's quite wide at the waist and it's widened the ball of the foot with a rounded wide toe box. I was advised to buy true to size, that's true to my brannock size which is 8.5D. I'm okay in this, but the last is quite wide and I think I should have got my usual half size down to an 8D, because these are roomy if I don't wear thick socks. I'm not swimming in them, but a little more snug would have been good. Despite it being wider than I like, the heels do lock in, and the comfort of not getting the balls of your feet squeezed and the ability to wiggle your toes is much appreciated. The arch support is incredible. I guess it's a testimony to Alden's experience in making orthopedic shoes, but somehow, despite a wide sole construction, I feel like the leather under the arch hugs my arch. I'm slightly flat-footed so I appreciate the support, and this feels almost like a can to leave a construction reaching in under my arch to support it. You can see here the wide heel has this curved shape, the curve extending into the inside of the arch. I think the width and this extra support from the heel in the arch is also a contributor to how comfy this is all day. Now it's time to take a look at cost and value. Bear in mind that I bought these lightly used on eBay at Aussie 300 dollars. Put that to one side for the moment. New, they cost about 600 US dollars, but it's how you buy them that I find interesting, especially if you're outside the US. To start with, Alden does not sell direct. I think they might own a couple of stores themselves, but otherwise, they sell through third-party retail stores, more like partners than retail stores. Most of these retailers carry the stock models, but many also offer store-specific make-ups. So for example, you could get an Alden Indie with Commando Sells in Kudu from one store, or maybe Loden Suede on a leather sole from another store. Buying a pair, especially in Australia, can be quite confusing, but the trick seems to be to either buy a stock model or to research the kinds of make-ups that you might like the styles of from the various retail stores. The ones that seem the most accessible to Overseas interest might be Alde Wine, spelled E-A-L-D Wine in Raleigh, Virginia, and Alden of Carmel and J-Crew. If you have a lot of time, there are a lot of stores. The Alden Shoe website lists all of them. What do you get for your 600 dollars? US dollars, I remind you? Well, you get an extremely comfortable boot. As I said, the combination of sole materials and construction and that incredible arch support means that you can walk and stand around all day in these without feeling any discomfort. They'd be great for anyone with a less-than-perfect arch. You get, from what I see, a really well-made boot. Even being secondhand, I haven't seen any defect that they may have come with or that they may have developed with wear. The materials, apart from possibly that controversial leatherboard midsole, are fantastic and top-notch. You also made in New England and a name that's been around for over 130 years. So I think you can say that they are worth 600 US dollars. But that doesn't necessarily make them affordable. I tell you what, living in Australia where US 600 dollars translates to over 900 dollars and where Australian 900 dollars in Australia will buy you exactly the same kind and volume of drinks and meals as in America, I'm pretty glad I found a good used pair at Aussie 300. Is it worth buying it from eBay at that price? I think having done your due diligence to check for wear, especially on the heel and the sole and inside the shoe, having checked on the leather that it isn't over-creased or dry and cracking, yeah, definitely worth it. There you have it, my review of the Alden Indy 403 in Brown Chrome Excel. I hope you enjoyed the review guys. Let me know what you think, especially if you know whether there's a structural reason for that faux mock toe. Put something in the comments below. If you enjoyed the review, I have a load more reviews and unboxings to bring to you and from time to time I'll bring you videos about the different brands and even other leather goods. So please click on the like and the subscribe buttons and take care. I'll see you soon.