Sean here. Fifty days ago I put on the first 3450 Maryam Horsebutt sample and more or less have not taken it off since. We have written about this boot twice already, once when the first sample arrived and once from the workshop in Guangzhou, but both of those were about how it gets built. This one is about what it is like to wear.
What the horsebutt actually feels like
Against the tea-core cowhide we use on the standard 3450, the difference is immediate. The horsebutt is softer to the hand and lighter on the foot. You would not guess that from a photograph. The surface does not look soft. But put it on and the leather wraps around the foot with real give.
The clearest way I can put it is that the leather follows the foot instead of arguing with it. Your ankle bends and straightens with every stride, and this upper does not resist that movement so much as go along with it. I do not mean it is slack. It is nothing like a canvas shoe that crumples and stretches out. Next to the standard 3450 it is softer, and on its own terms the density and the spring in it are excellent.
The single thing that decides how a boot fits is the last. Fifty days in this pair has reminded me that the leather stretched over that last decides almost as much about how the boot feels. Getting them on and off is not noticeably different. Standing in them is. The horsebutt holds the foot in a way I notice and like, every time. I will say it plainly: this is fifty days of understanding what the expensive leather is for.
The colour, and what light does to it
Honestly, the colour satisfies me more than the fit does. The surface gloss is much the same as the day the boots came out of the box. What has changed is everything happening off to the side of the light.
Where the light hits straight on, there is a quiet sheen. Where daylight glances off at an angle, the colour that comes back is not deep oxblood, not brown and not black. It stops me every time. My own habits have started to wear the surface back unevenly in places, and even before that began, the colour was already getting richer than it was at the start.
I do not think I can describe it properly. We shoot these posts on a Fuji X-T3 and I shot this one on the same camera, leaning on what Fuji does with colour to carry something the words will not. I am not sure it made it into the frame either. Still, showing you is better than telling you.
What has started to move
It is early to talk about patina. Even so, the front of the toe has begun to drop, and it is settling into a shape you will not find on a structured toe. Pulling the boots on and off has put a run of waves around the shaft at the ankle, and a crease at the back of the heel has set in and looks like it means to stay.
No longer in a hurry
For the first month, every time I came home and pulled them off I would sit and look over every part of them to see what had changed. Back then I wanted the ageing to hurry up. I have stopped wanting that. It is coming anyway, and there is nothing to be gained by rushing it. Seeing the change gathered up in photographs like this is its own small pleasure.
This is a boot that will keep me company for the next ten years without complaint. If I get the chance to write this post again a year from now, I would like to. And if we are still able to put this boot in front of you when that time comes, I would like that even more.
Next to an Addict
On the day of the shoot, Marcus turned up in a pair of Addict tea-core steerhide engineer boots he bought for himself, so we stood the two pairs next to each other and took some photographs.
The Addict is a faultless boot. I have nothing critical to say about it. The leather is different, the shaft height is different, the last is different. Put them side by side and you can see how two boots filed under the same name, both unmistakably engineer boots, can feel like completely different objects.
I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed setting them down together.
The boot in these photographs is the 3450 Maryam Horsebutt: Maryam horsebutt upper, unstructured toe, full leather heel counter, Goodyear welt construction, a VIBRAM outsole under the ball of the foot and a Cat's Paw heel, with brass hardware. The standard 3450 in tea-core cowhide is built on the same last, if you want to see where this one starts from.