 G'day guys, how you going? Welcome to Bootlossophy and if you're new here, my name is Tech. I come to you from Wajik country in Perth, Western Australia and I recognize the traditional owners of this land and the elders and leaders past and present. Today, I'm reviewing the Oak Street Bootmakers Trench Boot. This version has a brogue captoe in Horween's Natural Chrome Excel and on a leather outsole. This is Oak Street Bootmakers Trench Boot. The trench boot falls into the everyday boots category of boots and apart from special additions, they make several styles between captoes and plain toes and different types of uppers and outsoles. This particular version is a brogue captoe on the leather outsole. I'll talk about the leather outsole in a minute. This is a brogue captoe in the sense that there are brogue perforations cut into the age of the captoe. The name of the boot itself, the trench boot, should give you a clue about the style. Of course, it's a service boot, so called because it follows the type of boots used that were issued to service men and presumably women during the first and second world wars. And as it's a trench boot, I guess it harkens more to the trenches of the first world war. The style is usually based on a six inch tall boot with derby style open lacing, quarters sewn on the outside, sometimes a captoe like this one, sometimes a plain toe, built on a block heel so that soldiers didn't catch the heels on rough ground and generally built using a welted construction, but more of that later. Some service boots will have a bulbous toe box. I remember my own service boots from National Service having a very bulbous and thick toe cap, but the more modern versions that have been the trend since the mid 2010s are generally designed on a more sleek last that flattens out that toe box. While Oak Street bootmakers make the trench boot using different leathers, this one is from Horween Leather Company based in Chicago, and this is called the Natural Chromic Cell. Oak Street bootmakers is also based in Chicago. Oak Street bootmakers was founded by the owner George Vlagos in 2009. George is the son of a master cobbler and he grew up watching and I think helping his father in his business. So he learned the skills and art of shoemaking from his youth. As he was helping his father repair various shoes, he noticed that modern American shoe brands were lacking in real quality. And so he decided to open up Oak Street bootmakers. George has been quoted as saying that he is proud that he's preserving the heritage of fine American shoemaking through thoughtfully designed and well crafted footwear. Oak Street bootmakers is named after a short street in downtown Chicago that seems to be known for a high concentration of luxury brand stores. Oak Street bootmakers don't only make different designs of boots, they also make loafers and boat shoes and they're all designed to be recraftable and last a lifetime. As a sidebar, I have to remark on this time in the mid-2010s where, coincidentally or otherwise, a number of entrepreneurial people, either working in or interested in shoemaking, came to the same conclusion about the apparently sad state of American shoe brands. Think of Conor Wilson and Norman Walsh, who started Thursday Boot Company in 2014, Andrew Savisco, who founded Parker's brand in 2018, Wyatt Gilmore and Josh Lang from Grant Stone in 2016, think of Mark Barbera, who started Mark Albert Boots in 2016 and Vince Romero, who founded Truman Boots in 2014. I guess you could say that as early as 2009, Oak Street bootmakers was one of the first who saw the need and the trending desire for good quality heritage style boots supporting American industry. I think you can also say that this catalyst of new, young bootmaking companies, mostly selling direct to consumer on websites, let a match under the giant industries and more conservatively established companies like Red Wing to up the heritage boot game to meet the trend in their popularity. Indeed, the small agile new companies have been able to weather the storm that was, is the pandemic, and seem to have grown in popularity, supply chains aside. While the older established and maybe less agile and slower moving companies who produced heritage lines and got away with maybe less focus and quality have suffered. So talking about focus and quality, let's jump straight in and see how these trench boots are constructed. As usual, I'll start from the bottom and I'll go up. These boots are built on a leather outsole. Leather outsole seem to be quite controversial, although I can't say I know why. In my social media feeds, there are a lot of conversations about how they are slippery and that they don't last as long as rubber outsole. There are equally as adamant opinions about how they breathe better, how much more comfortable and flexible they are and how they will mold to the shape of your feet. Well, all of that is true. I think how you view leather outsole is dependent on your past experience and how you wear your boots. They are more slippery and they are more comfortable at the same time. They do wear out faster than some rubber outsole and they do flex better than rubber outsole at the same time. It's which side you draw on for what you need from your boots. I wouldn't go logging in leather sole boots. I would wear them to the office and if you're aware of what's on your feet on beer spilled slippery web pub floors. I wouldn't wear them gardening, but I would wear them in a clean factory or workshop. I wouldn't wear them on a hike in the bush, but I would wear them to take the dog for a walk. In this case, these are butyl leather soles like everything else. There are different things you can do to leather soles. You can leave them untreated, which I think Grandstone does on their soles. Or you can infuse them with oil, which is meant to make them more water resistant and flexible. Or in this case, you can infuse them with a butyl and oil compound. Now generally, untreated leather soles are probably less water resistant, especially once they're scratched and more slippery, but contrarially less slippery when they are scratched. Butyl is a synthetic rubber formed from a chemical called isobutylene and small amounts of another chemical called isopropene. It's introduced to the leather in resin form with a small amount of oil. The leather is immersed in an oily solution of butyl and it absorbs the compound. Because it's oily and it hardens in a rubbery fashion, you can't successfully glue a toppy rubber layer on it. I mean you can, but I'm told it will eventually separate. What you end up with in this butyl leather is a grippier leather surface even after wear and it's been scratched up. If I drag my hand across the sole, I feel it waxy and sticky. In these trench boots, the leather outsole is attached to the uppers using the Goodyear welter method of construction. If you've been following my channel, you know I've explained Goodyear welter construction before, but for those new to the channel, I'll go through it briefly. A welt is a narrow strip of leather up to two mils thick that encircles the edge of the boot. In this case, it goes all the way around the boot so it's a 360 degree welt. Some boots only have the welt go around the front of the boot about three quarters or a 270 degree welt. The inside edge of the welt is Goodyear stitch to the turned in inside edge of the uppers. Goodyear stitching is a particular stitch by a Goodyear stitching machine which sews the uppers to the inside of the welt. The outside edge of the welt is then stitched to the mid and out soles. In boots where it goes all the way through, you'll be able to see the stitch on top of the welt as well as underneath on the outsole. As the two parts of the boot, the uppers and the soles are not stitched through at the same time, the welt forms a moisture barrier between the outside and the inside. So more water resistant than if the boot was stitched all the way through the uppers and the sole construction together. And as you can remove the outside stitching, you can also more easily remove the worn outsole and replace it with a new outsole and just re-stitch it on without doing any damage to the leather of the uppers. The heel on this boot is a fully stacked leather heel, solid. It's a block heel with a thick rubber top lift. The top lift obviously helps with wearing down too quickly, as well as with shock absorption. But it is a solid piece of rubber and combined with a solid leather heel stack, the boots make the most satisfactorily loud thud clunk sound as you walk along a hard surface. Moving inside the boot and upwards, apparently there is a leather midsole when the outsole is rubber day night. But in this case, I can't see a midsole. I think the outsole, which from what I can see is about five to six mils thick, does for both mid and outsole. However inside, the cavity formed by the two or three mil thick welt around the edge is filled by a cork layer with a fiberglass shank embedded in the gap between the heel and the ball of the foot. A shank gives the boot rigidity and provides arch support and a fiberglass shank is airport friendly, as well as suppose it is tougher steel without rusting or flaking. Above that is a vegetarian leather insole and on top of that is a leather foot bed. When I got these boots, I was confused as to whether it was a removable foot bed. The one in the right boot got scrunched up just under my arch on the first day of wear. I had to remove it and then glue it down to avoid it continually shifting under my foot. So I thought to do the same in my left boot, but I found the foot bed there stuck on with what I think is a small dab of glue that I was able to peel off and then reglue it in myself a little more firmly. Staying inside the boot, the external heel counter is veg tend leather and covered by a two-piece backstay, a strip up the shaft and a heel cup covering the heel counter. These are double stitched. The toe box is lightly structured with a leather stiffener that's covered by what I think is not a true toe cap. What I mean by that is instead of a piece of leather on top of the vamp leather, it's actually a toe cap sewn to a cut-off vamp. The toe box has these brogue perforations and is sewn onto the vamp with a 2 plus 1 triple stitch pattern. I have seen reviews where they say the stitching is not straight. But what the hell, who measures a stitching with a minute ruler? It's straight enough for me with no mistitching that overlaps the leather joints. The lacing method is an open derby lacing system. The quarters are outside sewn on with a triple stitch with open lacing flaps and eight brass eyelets, no speed hooks. The eyelets are not backed with washers, they're just star pressed into the back of the leather. I usually find myself lacing up only to the seventh eyelet. If I lace to the top eighth eyelet, my ankles feel strangulated. The laces that come with the boots are I think guarded goods roll hide laces, and they are long. Oh boy are they long. It's not my favorite method but when I tie these I wrap around the shaft of the boot. The boot is lined in the toe box in the vamp. The lining which is leather comes along the sides of the boot almost up as far as the heel cap. The shaft is unlined as is the tongue. The tongue is ungusseted but whether because it's pretty thick at about two mils or because of the stitching I don't get any tongue slip during wear. The edges of the facings and the top of the collar are unfinished raw leather edges. They are reinforced with another piece of chrome excel on the inside. Okay now we're up here let's talk about the leather. This is Horween's undyed natural chrome excel. Horween is a nearly 120 year old family owned tannery in Chicago and one of its most famous leathers is chrome excel. Chrome excel is a combination tanned top grain leather that starts with chrome tanning and then followed by a vegetable tanning process and then followed by hot stuffing the leather with a blend of oils and waxes while it's steamed. The whole process takes about a month and produces a soft hardy waxy and self-curing pull-up leather. What that means is that the leather is soft enough to be comfortable yet stiff enough to be hardy. Due to the heavily infused oils and waxes they move around in the leather and so they have that pull-up effect when you push against it. This makes them naturally more water resistant and all the oils and waxes make them self-polishing giving them a polished look without needing any real polish. Unless you seriously gouge the leather most scuffs and marks can be polished out with your fingers moving the oils around or at worst with a little conditioner and a brush. This natural chrome excel comes out of the box a warm light honey color but like the skin that it is it will actually tan with sunlight and with wear it will darken considerably like this. That is some patina capability there. My pair is just over six months old worn regularly but not frequently and they've already deepened into a more mid-brown honey color. I already mentioned the puzzling issue with the leather footbed and QC wise there were some loose threads at the end of stitch lines but I'm okay with both issues. Despite the price it's still a mid-priced boot and I don't necessarily think that some loose stitching or a missing blob of glue is a huge QC issue. If these were $600 Aldens or RM Williams' or $800 Viberg's then I would complain. All in all the boots are finished very finely for what they are essentially not a dress boot. An interesting tip bit is where the trench boots are made. Most of Oak Street boot makers footwear is made in Chicago but I'm sure I read somewhere I can't find it again but I'm sure I read somewhere that the trench boot is made in upstate New York in fact in the same factory where Parkhurst and Wolverine make their boots. If so there are interesting differences between the finish on these boots and on Parkhurst boots. Bearing in mind that Parkhurst are providing more of a rugged vibe they're not finished as finely as these are. QC wise though I have to mention the quality of the chrome excel or maybe it's the skill in the clicking that's the process of choosing the right parts of the hide to cut or click when you're cutting the parts that make up the boot. If chrome excel has a fault it's embodied in the phrase chrome excel lottery. People say that you can be unlucky and pick up a boot where the chrome excel has loose grain that's where the grain or the hair side of the leather starts to flex away and delaminate from the looser fibers of the flesh side. When that happens you see some almost loose skin or flabby skin especially if it's from the belly part of the hide just think of man boobs versus six pack it's the skill of the clicker who chooses which part of the hide is chosen for which parts of the boot and often when they do see loose grain that part is chosen for say the shaft where any loose grain is hidden by your trousers. In this case the chrome excel is perfect there is no loose grain whatsoever not even in the hidden places like the shaft or the tongue. So whatever method maybe in the clicking process where maybe they actually don't use any loose grain parts of the hide or whether George simply walks over to Halloween in the same city and chooses hides specifically these boots have zero defect in the leather. In fact despite six months of regular but I hasten to add an interest of full disclosure not frequent wear maybe a week a month. In six months of regular wear the creasing or lack of creasing on these boots especially on the vamp is amazing in fact it deserves a close-up. As you can see the creases are very fine lines Phil Callis from Ashland Leather on his YouTube channel calls this a sugary break I guess because the creases are so fine and crystalline apart from some natural rolls and these fine crystalline creases there are no deep creases after six months of wear if you think it looks like I haven't worn them much take a look at the soles which shows the way I have put into them regular but not frequent over six months or so now which takes us to leather care looking after chrome excel is pretty simple if you're new to quality boots after moving from pretty standard finished footwear where the leather has been corrected or sanded and often a coat of heavy wax or other product is applied to the top and it's highly polished as a surface you may be horrified to learn that your nice smooth leather on your new boots will scuff and take up color differences and even textual differences it's what we celebrate as patina anyway chrome excel may look like your nice waxy polished dress shoes but take them for a walk and come home to a heart attack because you will bring home some scratches and scuffs it will scuff comparatively easily but it will also self repair by just the heat of your fingers rubbing the surface to redistribute the oils and waxes inside the leather at worse you can just apply some conditioner and again with the heat of your hands or with a good horsehair brush you can rub away those marks if you follow my channel you know my go-to conditioner particularly for smooth leather is venetian shoe cream and also note that Halloween itself uses liters of the stuff when they finish chrome excel i've also recently been trying big four primarily because it said not to darken leather i find big four to produce a slightly more matte effect with venetian shoe cream having more wax in its composition i think either would be fine apply them after a wipe down with a damp cloth and letting it dry and then a good brush with a horsehair brush the key is never apply product to a dirty or dusty leather you'd likely sticky paste the dirt granules into the leather eventually making them scratch and crack and weaken the leather fibers so clean brush then apply either venetian shoe cream or big four allowed to dry to a haze and then brush them again with a clean horsehair brush i would not apply polish but that's me these boots are casual and they are meant to look all servicy so i'm not looking for a high shine on mine i have links to where to buy all these products in the description below just open up the description box and then scroll down as for how often i condition them i've only just done these just recently before this video after six months where i think if i'd worn them frequently like every day almost i might have conditioned them two or three months ago the indicator is how dry the leather feels with chrome excel it takes a lot to dry them out let's quickly turn to how you wear these boots and what to wear them with these are casual service boots yes you can and i do wear service boots with smart and even business casual clothes if they're dark and shiny enough i even wear them with suits so sue me i'm a rebel however these boots due to the natural chrome excel leather and how they will patina i think i'd avoid wearing them to any formal or very dressy situations while they might be all right in this condition once they darken in an uneven patina like in the photo i showed earlier i don't think you can get away with wearing them to the church or a wedding in any case though they'd be great with any casual gear other than once they patina deeply business casual so obviously good with denim of any description although because they're currently a light brown i favor light or mid-wash they go well with khaki chinos and brown earth colored pants and jeans the leather and look would be great paired with a rugged casual look and now let's look at sizing and fit my true size as measured objectively by a brannock device not by any subjective reference to sneaker size is a us eight and a half in average d width most american bootmakers will suggest their boots run large and recommend sizing a half size down from true indeed in red wings in ellen edmonds aldons thursdays grandstone parkers truman i wear an eight d however oak street bootmakers recommended that i order true to size so i ordered an eight and a half d honestly ordering boots online from a company you've never tried before is a stressful business especially if you don't live in the us and the time and cost to deliver uh and then return them is substantial anyway full of trepidation i tried them on when they arrived and true to size was definitely the way to go i find the fit in these to be good on all fronts including the instep volume uh this is on what they call the elston last the last or the mold the boot is shaped around is snug at the heel a little loose at the waist but that's okay uh roomy at the ball of the feet hence avoiding any squeeziness and roomy at the toes with this round toe shape which i like some people call this a duck bill toe box and you can see why but i repeat i like it i don't think arch support is fantastic it's okay but it's not fantastic but the overall feel of the leather and cork underfoot is quite comfortable there was no break in required they fit it well with no pinching and they were comfortable out of the box these were the boots i pull out if i know i'm going to be standing around a lot all day or if i want something comfortable in my feet to lounge about in without being conscious that i have stiff boots on my feet finally let's take a look at price and value i've said before and i'll say it again price and value are related but not the same think of a gucci handbag pricey but do they reflect that price in real value in this case i bought these boots last november 2021 during black friday sales for us 307 dollars depending on options the trench boots sell on the website in the mid 400s i think from about 442 to 468 us dollars that's the price but what about the value well i think they're undoubtedly finely made they use really good materials that the chrome excel that from what i can see is carefully selected uh and it's thick the construction is all vegetarian leather soles and heel stacks and the butyl outsole is a cut above standard leather soles even the guarded goods laces are special the elson last is very comfortable and perhaps you want to trade some price for immediate comfort and as for customer service part of my thinking for value how's this when i first got these i oiled the rather thick and stiff laces and then i cut them down after two ways i realized that made a mistake and that they were now too short and too oily so i bit the bullet and i ordered a replacement pair of laces from oak street when i got them i actually received two pairs and a note from hayley that said wouldn't want him to get lonely on a long voyage so we sent two how good is that and when i thanked them on instagram they said that it wasn't any particular sales training that's the way hayley is well if they imbue their workers with that level of interpreting their business vision and that level of independent initiative to satisfy the customer with excellent customer service then to me that adds value to their brand and therefore their product no ridiculous reliance on a trendy logo like a Gucci handbag but real brand value through demonstration however i need to also look at what they compete with as a styler boot they're not far off parkhurst's allen or richman boots and also not that different from grant stone diesel boots i don't think it's fair to compare them with fursday captains because the captains are clearly an entry level priced in quality boot good for the price but not in the same category the parkhurst and grant stone boots sell for the mid 300s so there's a hundred dollar difference much as i like the brand value wise and their finish i ask if they're worth a whole hundred dollars more in value and i can't categorically say yes i'm very happy i bought my own sale for just over 300 dollars i would probably unflinchingly buy them for 350 dollars maybe even 400 but the mid 400s might be a bit too much in my evaluation of value so there you have it my review of these oak street boot makers brogue capto trench boots on a leather sole and in hawine's natural chrome excel i hope you enjoyed this review if you did i hope that you click on the like button to help me reach more viewers and keep the youtube algorithm happy i'll also be bringing you loads more boot reviews and unboxings and maybe more brand and style reviews so if you don't want to miss them click on the subscribe below and youtube will remind you when i update something until then guys take care and i'll see you soon