 This is part 3 of my series What Next After Entry Level Boots and in this iteration I'm dealing with dressy boots in the mid 300 USD range. This series of videos called What Next After Entry Level Boots follows from a series I put out last year called New to Quality Heritage Boots. In both these series I'm working on the principle that you may be used to buying cheaper cement construction footwear, maybe some fashion centric brands or even getting reasonably well-made boots like Timberland at 100 odd USD and not much more. But you may have seen how heritage style stitch construction boots have been trending lately and you like the look. Dipping your toe into the boot world if you followed my Entry Level Guides you may have bought well-made boots at around the $200 level and you like them. So the question is what next? Okay, I have to tell the truth here. In the first series one of the videos looked at Entry Level Brogue Boots up there. Brogue Boots rather than dressy boots. So this isn't a totally natural progression but I'm also assuming that your entry into Brogue Boots was motivated by liking the dressy look. So I'm cheating a bit and taking a look at the next step in dressy boots. Now note that I say dressy boots and not dress boots. I think that for your next step full-blown dress boots like black oxfords are potentially not as versatile and unless you want one specific boot for one particular outfit looking at dressy boots will give you a more versatile next step where the boots I'm going to look at can be worn with anything from say a suit to business casual in a smart professional office to weddings and funerals. But first what do I mean by dressy boots? Now me I'm a reasonably conservative dresser. I trained as a chartered accountant and I moved into strategic management consulting and I spent the last 40 something years of my life working in professional offices and also moving out into the field on worksites factories and over the last 30 years in Aboriginal communities in the Australian Outback. So my background is in dressy clothes even when I'm in the field because providing professional services while you want to be comfortable and fit in obviously you do need to maintain a certain credibility for what you're saying which unfortunately has been studied and proven to be backed up by how you dress. So be it. Which means that my definition of dressy boots means smooth leathers above all not suede not rough outs not oil nappy leathers. So full grain, calfskin, chrome excel and other smooth leathers. They should be smooth enough to take a polish and shine if you are that way inclined. It also means to me dark leathers dark browns or black and generally but not exclusively no light tans. Certainly no bright orange tans or heavily oiled tan leathers like you see on say red wing mock toes or the iron ranges and no sorry no green or blue kudos or camouflage shrunken suede like rambler. They should be pretty standard lace up or Chelsea boots and not any monk straps or jog per straps. And for me personally Chelsea's are fine but no side zips. I have too many memories of side zip platform boots for my teenage years and teenage dancing. This leaves a fairly conservative ankle boot or service boot design. No more than say six inches high a low block heel and using a last foot shape mould around which the boot is built that's slim low profile and almost certainly almond toe shaped. I thought of including a Chelsea boot in my recommendations but firstly I find that people outside of Australia find it difficult to wrap their heads around the fact that a Chelsea boot can be dressy. Tell that to the Australian Defence Forces who were once issued with polished black RM Williams Chelsea boots as their parade dress boots. The second reason I didn't include a Chelsea boot is the fact that I find it hard to recommend a dressy Chelsea boot I like for the mid US $300 price range. Yes I am aware that Mirmin have a few models that match my definition of dressy and they're under $300 but I haven't tried a pair of Mirmin myself and I'm loath to recommend something that I haven't worn myself. As for recommending RM Williams, well not for this series since they sell for over $500 I think $550. So we're into these. The Grant Stone diesel boot in black chrome excel a reasonable newbie to the boot making lists and the Wolverine 1000 mile boot in colourate chrome excel a veteran in those lists of boot brands. I did also think about adding a classic Ellen Edmonds Higgins Mill in black or brown chrome excel but they list at nearly $500 US even though they often discount right down. Realistically as a recommendation I'd probably say to look at the Higgins Mill for your next stage if you want to continue your collection after these. Let's take a look at these two boots on the table in turn. First I'm going to take a look at the Grant Stone diesel boot. Now to start with if you're new to the heritage style quality stitch construction boot world you may or may not have heard of Grant Stone because they are a reasonably new company and only available directly from their website. You won't see their boots in retail stores and you won't find them in an Amazon store. Grant Stone was started by Wyatt Gilmore and Josh Lang in 2016 so it's it's quite young. Gilmore had a family history in footwear. His grandfather was a respected and prolific long-term old and salesman and his father worked in famous good year-welded footwear brands and in doing so developed a relationship with a factory in China which was making good year-welded shoes and boots for the American brands that he worked for. Following the relationship Grant Stone partnered with that factory when they set up in 2016. Yeah Grant Stone based in Michigan makes their boots in China that's important to you but certainly what should be important to you is the quality of what they produce which the reviewer out there in print or media myself included agrees outstanding. With the family history particularly with Alden it's not surprising to see that they prioritized fit through designing their own lasts that fit like Alden's and while they have been introducing some exotic leathers recently like Kudu and Kangaroo and Offstitch they still produce boots that lean towards dressy in finish and look if not design. Take the Kudu that they produce I'm not recommending those as dressy boots by any means but even those are waxed before being sent out to you rather than being left with a dry ish natural feel that others like Parkhurst and Truman send out. Grant Stone's diesel boot is their flagship model and it's probably their most dressy design. Taking off my checklist low block heel six inches high no frills with just the vamp and the quarter pieces in the backstay. It incorporates the open Derby lacing system so you can dress them right down which is not as easy with a closed Oxford lacing system. Upping the dressy factor they are made of black chrome excel probably the most famous smooth leather out there from the famous Chicago generations old tannery Horween. You can get the diesel in a huge variety of uppers but to me this is their most dressy and yet with a twist using this naturally coloured welt and edging to me it frames the black and really sets it off well. It is a 360 degree good year welt where the uppers are connected to the sole construction by the use of a welt that goes all the way around hence 360 degrees the uppers are sewn to the insole on the inside and is stitched to the mid and outsole on the outside. This type of construction makes it re-solable theoretically multiple times when the outsoles wear out the leather outsoles also reinforce that dressiness of this model now this can be a con as well as a pro because they are more slippery than rubber outsoles but you know if they're worn dressy you are unlikely to be clomping through mud and grease on a work site. More on the construction for that mid $300 price the boot is fully leather lined. It uses American veg tan leather for the insoles, midsoles, outsoles and the welt as well as having a leather heel counter when most boots at this price range might use a thermoplastic heel counter. The inclusion of a triple ribbed steel shank between the heel block and the forefoot provides arch support and stability. All in all a complete quality package for currently $380 US dollars. I'll put a link to the website in the description area below this video and if you want to see my full review click on this link up here. My next recommendation for your next boot after an entry level dressy boot is the Wolverine 1000 mile boot. It is the 1000 mile boot not the 1000 miles boot and I have to keep reminding myself of that. So Wolverine is the opposite of Grant Stone. Their founder G.A. Krauss founded this company in 1883 as a small leather tannery and then also started to make boots. Within 20 years their bootmaking factory coincidentally also in Michigan was turning out 300 pairs of boots a day and in the 1920s changed the name to Wolverine. Like many leather and footwear companies of that time it was involved with the war effort in the first and mainly the second world wars but making gloves instead of boots strangely enough. Wolverine continued to grow past the war years and in the mid 1960s was listed as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. Now little known fact, Hushpuppies is a brand owned by the parent company Wolverine Worldwide which also owns Caterpillar Footwear, Merrill, Harley-Davidson Footwear, Saabego, Patagonia, Salkoni and Sperry. So you can take from this that A. they don't just make quality stitch footwear, they're involved in some junk as well and B. they are big. I mean ginormous. In financial 2022 they turned over 2.68 billion US dollars and their current market cap is just under 700 million US dollars which if you're a finance nerd and you work out those two numbers is quite interesting. Now Wolverine first introduced the 1000 mile boot in the 1910s intended as a work boot and marketed as giving you 1000 miles of wear. If you look back at the boots in the turn of the 20th century there wasn't really much of a differentiation between actual boots, dress boots and work boots and indeed military boots. People put on their boots, went to their jobs, blue collar or office or they dug foxholes and then they came home polished them up and went to church or to the parade ground. Being work boots though, the first 1000 mile boots were made with a very durable cordovan horse hide. While the 1000 mile is still made in the US, many of the other boots are now made in Southeast Asia. The 1000 mile boot has been modernized over the years including a few years when they actually weren't offered at all. But today's 1000 mile boot is actually a recreation of the original and today is offered in a whole range of leathers to cater for the explosion of interest in American heritage boots started by the market in Asia for red wing boots and beefed up by Weiberg's service boot entry in the 2010s. This one is also in Chromax Cell like the Grant Stone. This is in Halloween's color number 8 which is a burgundy undertone brown with all the hot stuff feel and pull up characteristic of Chromax Cell. Chromax Cell is chrome tanned at first and then goes through a whole 28 day process at the factory which includes the process of hot stuffing the hide in heated drums full of secret oils and waxes to give it an oil infused supple finish that's water resistant from and resistant to scuffs and minor scratching. It's called the pull up leather because you can see the oils and waxes move underneath when you apply pressure from the back. The Wolverine 1000 mile is also good u-welted but this is a 270 degree good u-welt meaning the world goes around the front three quarters of the boot. The heel portion is securely nailed and glued to the insole which allows for a sleeker line at the back of the boot. I said earlier that the advantage of the good u-welt is that you can replace the sole but it's also water resistant because the inside stitch is separate from the outside stitch and so because there are two stitches no stitch holes ever go through all the way from the outside to the inside. This pair has had a rubber half sole protector put on but originally it was a leather outsole. Only this one is a butyl infused leather outsole. A rubber compound is infused into the leather with a bit of oil so even without the sole protector this type of leather sole is a lot more grippy and water resistant than the Grant Stone untreated leather sole. But as this was designed as a work boot why did I pick this as a dressy choice? I think today, more than ever, the distinction is starting to close again. The lower profile leather sole helps. The smooth and burgundy coloured chrome excel certainly helps. As does the definitive 6 inch height, dark hardware, simple elegant pieces making up the boot, low block heel and even the kind of squared off toe box. It's different from a low profile sleek toe box and I think provides a very interesting look as a dressy boot. Like the Grant Stone though, this is only lined at the vamp and the shaft itself is unlined. Listed at over 380 USD but often selling it around 310 or 320 it's a very affordable classic heritage boot. Go and see my full review up here. Well that's it. This has been my take on where you go next after trying out entry level quality stitch construction dressy boots. There are others but I think the Grant Stone diesel and the Wolverine 1000 mile offers easy entries into the $300 price range. I should also mention that both are extremely comfortable to wear. The full layers of leather and caulk under your feet mould to the shape of your feet like custom orthotics and the chrome excel on the uppers is a very supple and adaptive leather. They are both comfortable out of the box. Go check out my other videos in this series and in fact if you miss the entry level series you can see those on my channel as well. 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