Why People Are OBSESSED w/ Red Wing Moc Toe Boots?

Starting off Moctober the right way
by cutting up the most popular moc toe the red wing 875 classic moc, and i'm
going to give away a pair of these. So stay tuned for more info on how to win.
So what is Moctober? It's just a combination of the word
moc-toe and October. Moctober! And i'm going to spend the entire month
cutting open the most popular moc toe boots and reviewing them.
And just like the white sneaker series at the end of this month
we'll do a finale video where we'll compare them all and choose an overall
winner of the series and give out some awards like best looking,
best built, and best value. And speaking of the white sneaker series,
at the end of that series I asked you guys
what's the best thing I can do to improve series' moving forward.
And the biggest thing was the sponsors.

So for this Moctober series I'm not
taking any sponsors from the companies that i'm reviewing and only
doing independent sponsors like purple for this video.
And I think that'll really help improve the channel and grow the channel,
but that means I'll be making several times less money per video that I do.
So if you guys could just do me a huge favor of subscribing to my channel
it'll make all the difference in the world. It'll make- it'll make it worth it
for not taking the sponsorships from the boot
companies and it'll help grow my channel, because my
overall goal is to get to 300 000 subscribers by the end of the year.
It's a pretty lofty goal but it is do-able because literally if one in 10
people who watched, probably this video, were subscribed, we'd
be there within a couple weeks or a month.

So…. and if we
do reach 300,000 subscribers by the end of the year
i'll do some crazy giveaway where we give away like 30 pairs of boots and
$3000 worth of store credit or something. So consider subscribing. It'd make a huge
difference to me. And um enough pleading with you guys. Let's
get to the information on these boots. So the brand is red wing. The style is
the 875 classic moc in the six inch. The color is the ora-legacy
leather, and they retail for $279 and they're made
in the United States. And these are some of the more popular
boots in the world. I would say probably top five most recognizable boots. And
they actually got their start in the 50's when red wing designed these
for hunters and outdoorsmen and then they gained a lot of popularity with
factory workers and construction workers because of how comfortable they are and
how durable they are. And now 50 years later
we've had this resurgence of heritage style boots
coming back into popularity and they're popular all over again.
And they really are an iconic boot because, you know, I've had them on my buy
list for years and I could never afford them.
But now that i've finally got them and been wearing them around for this series
I've never had anyone really come up and talk to me about what boots i was
wearing until i started wearing these.

And I've had several people come up and
be like "hey, are those red wings?" or "hey, where'd
you get those boots? Like i've been wanting to buy a pair of these. How are
they?" So they really are an iconic boot that
are really sought after and a really popular
style. And people really like these boots because they've kind of got that rugged
heritage look but they're comfortable and you can work in them
if you have to. They're not- they're not going to fall apart. So now let's kind of
talk about what we can gather from these boots and go through some of the
information before we cut them in half. So starting with the leather. This is a
full grain oil tanned leather which is a chrome tan leather with lots and lots of
oils infused into it to give a little bit of waterproofing and that
supple feel and that nice pull-up effect.

You can see there.
And it's tanned by the red wing owned tannery S.B.
Foot. And when I first got these boots I saw that that bluing on the inside of
the leather which is usually a bad sign for quality of leather, but I
really doubted that red wing would put out a terrible
leather in their most popular boot or at least one of their most popular boots.
So i contacted the tannery and talked to a guy named jeff
who kind of explained some stuff to me and went through some information.

And so I- talking to him and did a little bit extra
research, i came up with three reasons why
you see blueing on the inside of this leather and it's not a big deal.
So the first reason is that, like we saw in the
white sneaker series with the white leather, they leave the core of that
leather blue. And part of that is so they get that
white bright color. Because if you dyed it in different colors you'd be covering
up with white and it wouldn't look as, uh, brilliant. So
with this leather where you've got the really light undertones or that pull-up,
when you bend the leather or use the leather, you wouldn't have that same
bright effect. If the core of the leather was dyed a
darker color like you see in like a chrome excel or some of the other colors
that are dyed all the way through you could still get that effect. It just
wouldn't be as distinct and as light of a pull up. The second reason is
S.B. Foot told me that this is a heritage style boot and so they wanted to use the
heritage style tanning process or the tannage.

So this is the
exact same way they tanned this leather that they did back in the
day. Snd so they wanted to retain that that same look, that same feel, and that
exact same tannage because it's a heritage style boot. So i
thought that was kind of cool. And the third reason
goes really far down the leather rabbit hole
and- my ac went out today so it's hot in here with all these lights.
But let me read you what they said. So i was in my office
editing and i bored myself listening to myself read through that. So i'm just
going to put it here. And you can read through it. Pause it and
read through it if you want. But i also wanted to show you guys some
some samples i got from horween that might give a little more context to
the blueing on this leather and why they left it blue.
So the first one i want to show you was- is the chrome excel or the natural
chrome excel.

So this is a chrome tan leather that's retanned all the way
through. So you don't see any of the bluing. It's not
dyed necessarily but it's a darker color because they infuse so many oils and
fats and other things inside of this leather that it
gives it a darker shade. And then I've got a Rio Latigo
sample from Horween again that has bluing on the inside. And I think
part of the reason they leave that blueing is to keep those really light
undertones and highlights in this leather. Because I think if it was dyed
all the way through i don't think you could get quite as bright of a leather
without that bluing on the inside. So…. but you can get
that bright of a leather in a vegetable tan leather. So a lot of times
people, when they see this leather, would assume it's a veg tan leather
because of the color.

So hopefully I add some context. Now we'll get back to the
video, and i'll get back to editing. So I think
it's still a high quality leather. And it's- like leather is so hard to
make general rules about because there's so many different types of leather.
But after wearing this leather for a long time and all the research i did i
wouldn't have any concerns with the longevity or the quality of this leather.
It's just an old-school tannage and it's old-school leather. So they
kept it on their old school boots.

So as for wearing these boots,
so I did wear these boots around for a solid two weeks straight
and these are monster to break in. These are some of the hardest
boots that i've ever had to break in. Like this tongue
is- the first time i laced it up I couldn't even get it tight enough
because that tongue was so stiff. And what I did is i put some- I put a ton
of mink oil on there to loosen that tongue
up and get it nice and supple which made it significantly easier to
break in. But as you can see from this dark area here
it bled into the rest of the leather kind of causing that that shadow on
there. So if you don't want that then don't put tons
of mink oil on there like I did.

You could use some chamberlain leather
milk. That's that's a really good conditioner that isn't going to change
your- the color of your leather very much. So if you're going to do that then use a
really light conditioner. Otherwise you'll get a dark color and if you don't
care about the dark color do it. It makes it a lot easier to break
these in. Now moving to the inside of the boot. So this boot has a leather insole.
It's a full vegetable tan leather insole which i'm a huge fan of
because it doesn't stink as fast or as much and it breaks into the shape of
your foot, and it's a lot more durable and long-lasting than, like, a fiber board
or some of the other materials people put in boots.

The next thing I noticed
was how far up this tongue is gusseted. But as you
can see the tongue goes all the way up to the second eyelet. That's part of
the reason why these are so hard to break in.
But it also helps keep these keep dirt and water out of your boots.
And these boots aren't waterproof but they are water resistant and having
that tongue gusseted so high helps prevent any water from sneaking
between the upper and the tongue.

Another thing I didn't notice or didn't know
until i actually got these in hand is these are built in a more traditional
moccasin way where this top piece of leather and this piece
that wraps around are two separate pieces. A lot of times
you'll see this all be one single piece. I don't think it really matters one way
or the other but i thought it was worth noting because I didn't notice it. Next
thing is this puritan stitch on the side here.
So this puritan stitch is a really interesting stitch, and boot companies
use it on areas that have a lot of stress and a
lot of movement because it's a lot more durable
stitch when it comes to pulling and movement. And
what's interesting about this stitch is they stitched these with the same
machines that they probably stitched these boots originally with. Because the
machines they use are called a puritan stitch machine
and it has three needles and it stitches all three of these thread lines
at the same time. And also there's so many cool things
about this. It also pulls a thread through a little vat of liquid wax.

And
you can see just a little bit of that shine of the wax
on top of there still. And those machines are like 100 years old.
There's only a few people that know how to maintain them and keep them going.
It's really cool that they're using machines that are almost 100 years old
to still make boots that people are wearing
50 years after they introduce these boots- or 70 years. Next is the
construction. So this is a 360 goodyear welted
constructed boot which basically means this welt stitch goes all the way
around the boot. And if you're not familiar with what a
welt is it's just a strip of leather that goes all the way around the boot
that is sewn to the upper of the boot and also sewn to the next layer down in
the boot. And you almost can't see the next layer down but it's a harder rubber
layer just below the welt that is then glued
to this crepe outsole that red wing makes. But what's
even better about this particular style of boot
is that goodyear welt stitch doesn't go all the way through the boot.
S when this outsole wears out all the cobbler has to do is literally just peel
this old outsole away and glue a new one on.
And as long as the rest of the boot is in good condition that's all you have to do
to resole it.

And that's really important for this style of outsole
because these these crepe outsoles are really really comfortable
but they wear out so fast, and so it makes it a lot easier, a lot faster to
resole. And you can even do it from home if you have
most of the right equipment. Now finally, what's on the inside of this boot?
Red wing is not shy about sharing what's inside of their boots, and we know
there's a cork layer on the inside.

And the cork layer is just a filler
layer that that molds to the shape of your foot
over time. And so with that leather insole, and the cork,
after you wear these for a while you'll basically have a footprint inside of
your boot kind of like when you were a kid and you'd
go find some wet cement and put your hand in it. You'd have that footprint or
that handprint. Same thing inside of these boots. Now
let's cut this thing open after we talk about the sponsor of the video which is
purple. So some of you guys might remember when i
moved the shop down here to Salt Lake, me and Toaster were stuck
living out of the office and sleeping on a $20 mattress I got from the local
thrift store, and it was a really stark reminder of
how important quality sleep on a quality mattress is for me.
Because once i finally got my apartment and got my mattress down here, the amount
of productivity and energy i had was night and
day difference.

So when it comes to doing a sponsored video for purple
they're about as easy as it gets. There's only three things that
that make them different and make them stand out to me. Uh the first one is that
purple grid that everyone knows purple for.
It really cuts down on pressure points. So like if i'm sleeping on, like, a crappy mattress my entire hip will go numb halfway through the night.
And the second one is it keeps really cool and it doesn't get that swampy feel
like you feel in some mattresses, because first you got that purple grid
that keeps it cool and it also has 2,500 air channels
that make the mattress a lot more breathable. And the third one is it's
made out of high quality materials here in the united states
which i'm a huge fan of. So you should consider buying a purple mattress for
the same reasons we buy high quality boots because quality matters.
You get what you pay for and like that old saying goes "invest in your bed and
in your boots, because if you're not in one you're in the other." So thanks to
purple for sponsoring this video and check out their mattress via the
link in my description.

Now it's time to cut these open.
And I don't want to do it but i really want to show you guys
what that foot imprint looks like. And i want to leave more sizes open for the
giveaway. So…. and i just barely got these broken in
and i've really loved these boots. So whatever.
Let's get to it. Alright. We got it cut in half. Let's
see what's inside. So I thought that was really cool to see
my footprint in this this boot so fast. You know, it's only been a couple
weeks and it was actually more of a footprint than I expected.
But if you saw in that cutting footage, you can see exactly where my
foot broke into that shoe and where that
leather started to compress, and that cork layer started to compress.

So i
have that footprint in there I thought that was kind of a cool little
thing. It's kind of gross but also kind of cool. Um so now let's go through
the layers starting with the outsole working our way up. So this is that crepe
really soft um Christy style outsole. Then above that is that little layer I was
talking about that the sole is glued to. And above that is the
cork layer. And then above that is the leather
insole. The insole is really thick. I wasn't expecting it to be that thick.
That's a really thick piece of leather. And then from there we've got the
leather counter and a little bit of a liner
at the forefront of the boot.

A little bit of a toe stiffener,
thermal plastic at the toe, and that's pretty much it. You know there's
not a whole lot to this boot. It's a really simple construction
but a really effective construction. There's a reason that goodyear welted
boots and moc toe boots have been around for
forever. They're a really solid construction. So now what do i
think of this boot or what's my overall review of this boot?
Um, I was a little bit concerned coming into this
that the the leather insole was going to be thin and there wouldn't be much cork
filling but, as you can see, that's a big old
chunk of leather and there's a good amount of cork filling in there.
So I'm pleasantly surprised by this boot.

You know this is a boot that i've been
wanting for years and i forgot to talk about the leather thickness
but the leather thickness is 2.5 to 2.3 millimeters.
So good thick leather. Long-lasting leather. So
overall I think it's a really great boot. But we don't really- we don't have
anything else to compare it to, and that's why I like doing these series'
is- I can tell you this is a good priced boot or a well priced boot
but unless we have anything else to compare it to there's really no context
to it. And if you're considering buying these boots
i made a video on on how to get the correct size of these because these are
notoriously hard to find the right size.

And that's why
half the time when you see people wearing these boots
they look like they're wearing clown shoes, because they bought the wrong size.
So I made a video solely devoted to finding the correct
size for you in this particular boot. And that kind of
brings us to the rules of the giveaway. So to win a pair of these I've got sizes
from eight and a half to 11 from that sizing video and i'm
going to give away one pair, unless this video does really well, I might give away
a few pairs if this video does really well.

All you need to do is
first be subscribed to the youtube channel.
Second, follow me on instagram and then third,
go watch the sizing video, figure out what size you are,
and in that comment section of the sizing video, leave a comment with what
boot size you are and your username for your instagram so
I can message you when you won. And that's all there is to it. So thank
you guys for watching this video. Let me know what you think,
and consider subscribing, because that one little teeny click
makes all the difference in the world to me and my channel. So thank you guys so
much for your support. I really appreciate it. See ya. Oh wait
Danner Bull Runs are Thursday. Um that's the next boot. So look out for
that one on Thursday. See ya..

As found on YouTube