 How you going? In this video I'll be comparing my wax suede boots, but I'll also talk about what wax suede actually is, how to care for it and rewax it, and why it's different from wax flesh. Stick around, it'll be fun. G'day, welcome back to Bootlossophy, and if this is your first time, my name is Tech. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands I live and work on here in Perth, Western Australia, the Wajik people. I'm going to go through each of the wax suede pairs of boots I own, from Grant Stone to Caswell to Baudon, Colombia. But first, let's talk about suede. Suede is a type of leather made from the bottom half of an animal skin and is a split leather. A full grain hide is run through a roller with a blade running horizontally, which splits the thick original hide into a top and bottom half. The top half is taken off to be made into full grain or top grain leather, and the bottom half is made into suede. As you can imagine being split off from the smooth grain top half, the suede split is a nappy textured leather on one side and a rough out leather on the other. Some boot makers will actually turn the suede split so that the rough out side of the suede is used on the outside of the boot, just like a full grain hide turned rough side out. This is why some English manufacturers will call their boots suede when in fact they are rough out, just with the suede side on the inside of the boot rather than the smooth skin side as in full grain roughouts. The advantage of suede is that it's a softer and more supple leather, but of course the downside is that because of the looser fibres it's not as strong as full grain leather. In fact the word suede comes from the French gant le suede or gloves from Sweden showing what it was first used for. Also on the plus side although I just said it was not as strong is that it is durable as distinct from strong, but this I mean that because of the looser fibres it can withstand scratching a lot more easily than smooth grain leather. Now once treated the neck becomes soft and smooth like a fabric and so it's also attractive as a dressier nappy leather than rough out. Wax suede is just a further development of suede leather. Generally after the suede is split from the hide it is corrected to refine the nap and then it's treated with wax, sometimes in a secondary process of tanning, sometimes just by finishing off the surface with a coat of wax that's then heated to blend the wax into the fibres themselves. The most famous and probably best type of wax suede is Charles F. Stead's waxy commander. Charles F. Stead is a generations old tannery from the 1890s and is based in Leeds in England. They heat the suede with wax in it to shrink the fibre structure by up to 25% and in doing so the wax is then impregnated into the fibre structure. The tightness of the fibre structure then means that it prevents stretching and overcreasing allows dyes to work with the waxes in it and then cracks off eventually to develop a beautiful wear and patina. With the tight structure and the waxes it's obviously a lot more water resistant than normal suede and Stead treats waxy commander in the tannage to make it waterproof when new. Other tanneries will avoid the shrinking because it means a loss of product and while some will still impregnate the suede with wax others will simply coat the surface with wax. As wax suede is a less delicate leather than untreated suede it needs less care. In fact wax suede's welcome hardware so that the wax on the surface can actually crack and wear and reveal the nap underneath. All it needs in the most part is a good brushing every now and then to remove dirt and dust and then from time to time going over it with a suede brush that has harder bristles sometimes copper bristles. If dirty it can be cleaned with a suede cleaner or even saddle soap if you don't mind the waxes in the saddle soap are leaving a waxy film over the just released nap under the wax from the tannage. Particularly with lighter or redder base suede like tobacco or snuff waxy commander as the nap starts to show through so will the reddish base color to create a really beautiful patina. If you do want to return to more or less the original waxy look once the nap is really showing you can use a waxy type of conditioner like venetian shoe cream or preferably something like a waxy leather cream or balm and then brush it off once soaked in. You can also apply a harder layer of wax back on the surface using an otter wax fabric wax bar rubbing it over the warm boot and then using a heat gun or hairdryer melting it into the surface. You may have to repeat the process a couple of times and you can see me do it with the grandstone edward boot in tobacco waxy commander up there. But let's now take a look at the character of wax suede first with these grandstone brass boots in what they call their earth makeup. What grandstone called earth is a chocolate brown base suede that's been very lightly waxed. This is a child stead waxy commander but even out of the box it doesn't look and feel as heavily waxed as the on the outer than any other waxy commander hides. I'm sure it's turned the same way as all waxy commanders that is both waxed in the tannage as well as at the finish on the surface but the surface does feel like it has less of a surfacing of hard wax. For some reason it feels softer under the hand and even when the wax is wearing off you do get the chocolate nap showing through but it still feels and looks less waxy on the surface. You can see the full review of this pair up there. I have worn this pair so hard on hikes and walks that the surface wax has all but gone and I have rewaxed it recently using a light rubbing of the otter wax fabric wax and then heating the wax coat with a hair dryer allowing it to melt into the suede fibers. I only put one coat of wax on it because it felt right to have a light coat over this soft nap. The actual patina when it's worn hard is a lot less aggressive than those with the reddish suede under the wax and it gives a softer feel to the boot because underneath the dark wax it's a dark chocolate anyway which is a good time to compare the earth with Grant Stone's Edward boot in what they call wax tobacco. By the way I'll leave links to all of these websites in the description below so you can have a look and explore and see what their website and publicity photos look like and if you want to buy any some of them are affiliate links. Despite being called a wax tobacco makeup this is also a stead waxy commander. In this case the wax in the tanning process is the usual wax mixture but then a dark brown surface wax is applied and in this case it seems more heavily than the brass boot or at least the suede nap is a bit rougher because out of the box they felt waxy on the surface and the leather did not feel as soft and supple as the brass boot in earth. Underneath this dark surface is a tobacco colored or reddish suede and as soon as you walk it shows through. I have also recently rewaxed these with auto wax. The auto wax is not colored but despite that after the coatings you can see it's dark and the reddish suede underneath by quite a lot. When it was worn hard it did develop the most amazing patina showing through the nappy red tobacco color of the suede underneath and actually the nap appeared as if it has longer fibers than the earth model. Because of the rewaxing it's hard to see the tobacco showing through in real life so I brought along these the casual lisbon boot in snuff waxy commander. Now I don't know if snuff suede is the same as tobacco suede because after all snuff is a form of tobacco. In the hand it looks the same and you can see the wear on the vamp where it shows through the creasing. I haven't rewaxed this. The differentiation between the reddish nap showing through and the darker wax surface of the stead waxy commander so you can see why the earth waxy commander is perhaps surprisingly less contrasting when it wears. Now I want to show you that difference in contrast with these two boots from Bordeaux and Colombia. This is their Tucano lace-up combat boot in medium brown wax suede and this Chelsea one here is the Isidro in dark brown wax suede. Check out the review of the Tucano up there. I've also shown off the Isidro boots before so go into my channel and have a root around and you'll find the video of them. Now I don't know if the light and the camera are good enough for you to see but one has a lighter brown base in the suede and the other has a darker brown. The lighter medium brown base shows much more contrast as it patinas and that lighter base shows through whereas the Isidro with the darker base certainly looks like it's developing patina but there's not a stronger contrast between the colour of the nap showing through and the darker still waxed areas. Both of these are wax suede from an Italian tannery. They probably went through a similar tanning and waxing process to suede's waxy commander but you can feel a difference. Out of the box these felt stiffer than the stead leathers despite the waxing on the surface on both and this also feels like it has a less heavy coat anyway. In wear the different temper was also felt they were harder to break in whereas the stead leathers felt just like a heavy suede. You could have been forgiven to think that these were full grain by the initial temper of these boots. Now that they have worn in and developed the patina where the wax has rubbed and worn off they still feel stiffer and the nap feels less soft and shorter just like the Italian unwax suede on my estoflex boots and you can see a review of that up there. I'd be hard pressed to say which I prefer I think you know. I think you can categorically say that stead's waxy commander is a really great tannage but they've been doing it for decades but I can't say these are bad just different and in fact tougher. How can I put this? If you want the wear and patina to look good and show in the contrast of nap and versus wax go for a red based waxy commander. If you want tougher wax suede boots where the patina is less contrasting but looks more like a wax rough out go for this Italian wax suede. Now before I finish I want to touch on waxed flesh. I think I said at the beginning did I say at the beginning? I think I said at the beginning that wax suede is not waxed flesh. If I already said it I might cut this bit out in the edit if I'm you know observed enough but wax suede is not wax flesh. As I described wax suede is taking the split suede bottom layer of a hide and then tanning it with waxes and adding a wax treatment to the surface. Waxed flesh is a wax rough out leather. When you split the hide to make suede from the bottom and smooth grain leather from the top sometimes the top is turned around the wrong way to make into a boot with a rough fibrous nappy flesh side outwards. Waxed flesh is basically the rough outside covered in a much thicker covering of wax than used on the wax suede. I'll talk about this white MP boot in cinnamon waxed flesh as the example. So this leather is from Halloween and basically it's the acromic cell leather tanned as chrome excel through you know the multi stages over 28 days and then they finished a rough outside with several layers of thick wax. When new there is so much wax it's hard to tell that it's a rough out leather. The wax makes it so smooth that it looks like smooth grain leather these well worn as you can see from the creasing at the vent and at the shaft. But even so it's hard to see that there's any kind of nappy rough out in there. I can tell you it takes some really hard wearing to get the rough out to show through which speaks for the hard wearing durability of this waxed flesh leather. Now this pair of Truman boots in Java wax flesh about just as all a lot harder worn on some dry rocky trails on my weekends and you can see a lot more nappy rough out showing through on the heels in the shaft on the toe all in all the wax flesh is a lot tougher than wax suede but both are pretty durable. So in summary should you get a pair of waxed suede boots? I think a lot depends on how you want to wear a particular pair of boots. They will patina quickly and if there is a lighter colored base suede they will show through a quite a sharp and rough contrast with the starting waxiness on the surface. So if you want dressier boots be aware of that. If you like the rougher showing patina and the look of boots that have had a hard life a wax suede will be what you need. They're water resistant if not waterproof at least at the beginning and being suede never mind wax they'll withstand scratches better than a smooth grain boot and you can intend to wear it hard no problem. So as wear the proof boots in water rain mud or snow they would be what you want wearing them to go to the office no probably not even if you wear regular suede choose to work not wax suede unless your work dress codes are relaxed to the rugged side of things you know like maybe you work in admin for the sas or delta force or something like that. As I said I'll leave links to the makers below so if you like the style go and take a look and of course don't forget to click on like right and if you're not yet subscribed come on these videos are fun click on the subscribe button down there which means I'll see you next time and until then take care and I'll see you soon music welcome welcome welcome okay