 G'day, how are you going? My name is Tech and welcome to my channel Bootlossophy. I acknowledge the widget people who are the traditional custodians of the country that I live in here in Perth in Western Australia. In this video, I'm going to review the brown flex chucker boot from Italian makers Astor Flex. This pair of chucker boots is called the brown flex from Italian makers Astor Flex based in Northern Italy. This particular pair of boots was provided to me for review by American online men's gear retailer Huckbury. Now I've made no commitments to say anything special about these boots, so I'm going to review them in my normal way. I will though put a link to the Huckbury website where you can buy these if you like them after my review. You can find that link below. It is an affiliate link and you don't pay any extra, but I get a small kickback to help me defray the costs of this channel. Now, I've already reviewed a couple of Astor Flex boots and in fact one of my first reviews in this channel was of their combat star lace-up model called the boot flex, which you can see up here. Astor Flex is an Italian company founded by the Travanzoli family in the 1890s in a small town that had a lot of family-run boot and shoemaking workshops much like the Indonesian town of Bandung. After the First World War, the company grew into an industrialised factory setup. And they continued making traditionally stitched-down shoes from there. Today, the family ownership is into its sixth generation and the current owners have embraced an eco-conscious mission to their bootmaking, ensuring that they use vegetarian leathers to avoid the chrome salt runoff as well as natural rubber for their soles, water-based dyes and non-solvent glues. They've had a partnership with Huckbury for about eight or nine years and apart from the lace-up boot flex I bought a couple of years ago, they also make loafers, Chelsea boots and other chakas and they're all called something flex. This pair is a chakaboot design called the brown flex. It does look like the original Clark's desert boot, which is also a chakka. All desert boots are chakas, but not all chakas are desert boots. Chakaboot are a simple low-cut ankle boot that's made from three main pieces of leather with either two or three pairs of eyelets for the laces and a thin sole. Chakaboot originated in India where they were created by British Army units playing polo. The name chakka came from the polo chakka or the six playing periods in a game, each of seven and a half minutes in length. A desert boot is a form of chakaboot. While a chakka is traditionally made with a thin dressy sole, good year welting and full grain uppers, a desert boot is made of thicker rubber crepe sole and with soft suede or nubuck. James Bond, for example, wears smooth grain Crockett and Jones chakkas with a dressy outfit, while the sturdier desert boot version of the chakka was worn by British officers in World War II in the North African campaign. This particular brown flex is in the desert boot half of the ledger. It has the three main pieces of leather, the vamp and the two rear quarters. It is very low-cut to just up to the ankle bone. It has two blind eyelets and a sturdy stitch down construction. And it's made of tough casual nubuck leather on top of a chunky crepe rubber sole. The look is so relaxed yet sturdy that it can only be worn as a casual boot. With the thicker crepe rubber sole and the nubuck leather, it's hard to wear this with a suit which many English gentlemen would wear chakkas with smooth grain good year welting chakkas. So jeans and a button down or button up shirt with the collar peeping above a crew neck relaxed jumper will work. You can also go all Steve McQueen and wear a relaxed neutral colored chino, a polo shirt and throw a herrington jacket over it, just keeping all the colors earth toned and neutral. In this dark brown it would go really well with navy. So a navy chino, a t-shirt and a leather bomber jacket gives a mix of relaxed but hardiness in the look. This color brown goes with a whole load of colors and shouldn't be hard to pair it with something in your closet. As for construction, Astolflex have always used the traditional stitch down construction method, which was also used by Clarks in copying the desert boots used by the British army in North Africa, which they copied from their South African comrades felt-shown shoes used by officers of the South African regiments also stationed there. The upper panels are stitched together and lasted and then the bottoms are flared out in the lasting process. The flared out uppers are sewn onto a leatherboard midsole. This is intended for some water resistance since the water outside the boot should roll off the flared out uppers but it works equally well for sand and dust. The leatherboard midsole is made up of scrap pieces of recycled leather that's chipped up and mixed with glue and then formed into sheets which are cut into midsole. They will not wear anything as long as real leather midsole but they serve a purpose of better breathability, drying faster when wet and to meet a price point. The crepe rubber outsole is then glued onto the leatherboard midsole securely and the crepe rubber heel is glued on top of the outsole. It truly is a simple but reliable construction. Okay, it won't last as long as stitch down on a leather midsole and using a hard rubber composite outsole like daylight but it suits the easy comfort and fit of a desert boot chaka. The crepe rubber is raw rubber that's been coagulated and pressed or crepeared into sheets that are used for the sole. As an aside that's how rubber is transported from plantations to factories where the crepe rubber is chipped and mixed with chemicals to make vulcanized rubber. As an outsole it's remarkably soft and forgiving and so it's very shock absorbing. It's also very grippy being almost pure rubber but it does wear quicker than hard rubber compounds and it really picks up dirt and becomes quite unsightly after a while because it's so grippy. The midsole being leatherboard means that the boot probably isn't resollable without being a lot of trouble however as a lower price boot you'd probably decide to replace it than to re-sole it when the time comes. It doesn't feel like there's a shank but the heel and outsole is so flat and low so maybe you don't need one. Inside the boot is a removable leather comfort insole backed by foam. It's really quite comfortable and does provide a decent amount of internal arch support. Once you take the insole out and if you look directly into the leatherboard midsole you can see the stitching through the uppers into the midsole on the edge. Now that surprises me because sometimes that exposed stitching can wear and sometimes it can even be more uncomfortable. On the inside the uppers are lined with a soft veg tanned lining leather which makes it feel quite luxurious. The tongue is also lined and being a short little tongue it's unguesseted. The uppers leather is an Italian oiled newbuck leather. Now newbuck is a heavily corrected leather. The height is tanned and then the top grain is sanded quite heavily until the surface becomes nappy. Running your hands over newbuck it feels velvety except in this case it's an oiled newbuck which means that they pack it with oils which tend to smooth out that velvety feel. They haven't named the tannery but the feel and suppleness of the leather is good. You can see that it is oil infused because the variation moves as you walk and gradually builds up into a nice distribution of light brown and dark brown. The colour is called Ibane which is Italian for Ebony but it's not black it's definitely a dark brown. I like this oiled newbuck it feels supple and it looks good. I don't feel much reinforcement in the toe but there is a heel counter and to me it feels like leatherboard again. It's very light in touch and it flexes easily under pressure. Finishing it off at the top there are two eyelets unfinished without hardware front and back. Now that may wear through in time. AsterFlex provided two sets of laces this flat cotton pair and a round cotton pair and there it is. It didn't take me long to explain how it's constructed because it's pretty simple and straightforward. Now to leather care it's a rugged newbuck so I think leather care is pretty simple as well. It's quite an oily newbuck so I wouldn't rush to condition it. When you do unlike dry newbuck which needs a light spray on conditioner I'd use an oily but less waxy conditioner like Neitzfoot oil or even something like Big Four. Otherwise I'd really largely leave it alone and only brush it from time to time to keep the dust and dirt off if necessary wipe off stuck on dirt with a damp microfiber cloth. In this case less is more I think especially as it's a very casual boot that would look better for a less polished look. As an Italian product this is sized as an European 41 that equates to a US 8 or a UK 7. Now my Brannock size measurement is a US 8 and a half and in most boots I size down by a half so it was no different here. In comparison to Thursday boots Red Wing, Grant Stone, Alden, Alan Edmonds I take all their boots in an 8 same as these. So if you're a D width taking half size down from your true size should be good. Unfortunately though they don't do half sizes and they don't do different widths. I think if you have wider feet you probably need to size up but you should check with customer service at Huckbury. In a size 8 these fit me really well in thin or no show or even no socks. It's just the right length with enough width not to cause any hot spots on the balls of my feet. The right one often giving me trouble on other boots but not this one. The midsole and rubber outsole is immediately bendy and flexible so there's no heel slip even though inside the heel pocket there's no sway to grab your heel. The comfort is very good. There is a surprising amount of median arch support. Nothing like well-made supportive work boots but enough for your feet not to get tired during the day. The softness of the crepe rubber means that footfall is well absorbed and feels comfortable and walking. I can't say it's like a slipper but you know it is a low boot so almost. Size and comfort is 8 to 9 out of 10 for me. How about value? On the Huckbury website this is listed at 195 US dollars and what do you get for that? You get a pretty good Italian oil new buck that feels supple yet looks reasonably tough. You get a good standard of construction with full leather lining okay you get cheaper leatherboard instead of real leatherboard midsole sorry real leather midsole and you get crepe rubber which is also a cheap material. You do pay more for the conscious decision of choosing greener materials that often costs more. You do get comfort you also get style so all in all I think it's a reasonable balance for the price. A Clark's desert boot can be bought for about 150 160 US they come in different versions and a Clark's original is at least another 100 more depending on the outlet but an interesting comparison would be to the Thursday scout which sells for 160 US dollars but Thursdays are the masters of lower price brackets aren't they? So what's my conclusion? Look I think it's probably worth the price but looking at the competition maybe I'd wait for a sale but if you wanted a softer more relaxed desert boot and you didn't want to wait it's certainly cheaper than Clark's original desert boot and it looks less structured than the Thursday scout so go for it and here we are at the end of the review. What do you think? 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