The 3450 Engineer Boots in Horsebutt: A First Sample

Marcus here again, picking up where my one-year review of the 3450 left off. This time I want to talk about a sample that has finally been made: the 3450 engineer boots in horsebutt.

A new last, and a question we had not asked

I already let this slip in the notes from our benchmarking trip through Seoul, but we are developing a new last together with our partner. The direction is clear: an engineer boot that carries less of the workwear in it and a little more dress.

Somewhere in the middle of that, though, came a rather unremarkable realisation. Plenty of people are already perfectly happy with the 3450 exactly as it is, without touching the last at all. Talking it over with Sean, we ended up saying an obvious thing out loud again: what finishes the shape of a boot is which last it was built on, yes, but just as much which leather it was built in.

So we put a question to ourselves. Have we really shown our customers everything the 3450 last can do? The answer, of course, was no.

The last is only half the answer

Until now, 3450 has meant tea-core cowhide. Which means every 3450 anyone has worn has been shaped by the character of a leather our production partner developed in-house.

A lot of people assume a boot's shape is decided by its last. That is half right and half wrong. The shape of a boot comes out of which last you start from, the character of the leather laid over it, who is wearing it, and how they wear it. A boot is a thing in permanent mid-change. Because the upper carries so much area and volume, that change over time shows up in layers, from the surface of the leather all the way to the silhouette of the boot itself.

Put it another way: hand the same last to the same customers in a completely different leather, and the boot will not end up looking the same. That, we decided, is one honest way to hand people a genuinely new experience.

Why horsebutt

We looked at a lot of leathers and talked through more. Where we landed was horse, and specifically horsebutt, the leather taken from the hindquarters.

Horsebutt is already used widely across premium engineer boots, and for good reason. It is stiff and yet soft. Its surface is even and yet full of different textures. Depending on the angle you look from it reads matte and brilliantly glossy at the same time. It is a leather that holds opposites in every part of itself, and the people who love engineer boots most tend to treat a boot built in it as the final form.

This first sample uses leather from Maryam. I doubt Maryam needs any introduction from me.

How this sample is built

For the toe we chose unstructured as the base, so the toe box can move and settle into the shape of whoever is wearing it. At the back we put in a full leather heel counter, for the way it holds the foot.

Honestly, the first sample is more than satisfying. We set a dark brown edge against it, a colour that sits beautifully with the cut edge of the tea-core, and ran white stitching over that. It comes about as close to textbook as anything we have made. Even writing that, I wonder whether a textbook version of anything can really exist. But I cannot find a flaw in how this one is built or how it looks.

Vibram, and a Cat's Paw heel

Since the leather itself moved up a grade, we went looking at where else we could raise the value of the product. On top of the Vibram outsole that has always been base spec on the 3450, we fitted a Cat's Paw heel.

Cat's Paw is the piece Toys McCoy reaches for again and again on its own products, and it is already rated among the very best heels by people who pay attention to this sort of thing. We think customers with an eye for it will be glad to see it there.

What happens next

Now we take this boot to our workshop in China, from August 24, for five days. We will sit down there with the sample in hand, settle the final spec of the 3450 horsebutt special edition, and push further into the new last still in development.

Alongside opening up this development process, we are also going to set aside a separate post to introduce our boot partner properly. I think once you read it, it will be much easier to understand how we are able to put this quality in your hands at the price we do.

Which leaves the mission sitting in front of us in the short term: working out how far we can bring this boot down to a price you can genuinely accept. I want to put it in front of you as soon as we possibly can.

The boot the horsebutt edition is built on is the 3450 engineer boot: full-grain vegetable-tanned tea-core cowhide, Goodyear welt construction, and an Italian Vibram outsole. Everything above is still a sample. When the horsebutt edition is ready, this is where it starts from.