Full-Grain Leather Sneaker

Details

A low-top sneaker cut from 1.4 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned cowhide. The name says full-grain, so here is what backs it. Full-grain is the outer surface of the hide left as it grew, with its natural pores and its healed scars visible, and it is the layer where the fibre is densest, which is why it creases without cracking and darkens instead of flaking. Nothing is buffed off and no grain is printed on. The thickness is measured to ISO 2589 and the grain is confirmed uncorrected by microscopy to ISO 17131, both on a sample from every lot. The word the market uses instead is genuine leather, and it is worth knowing that it is not a compliment. The trade grades hide as full-grain first, then top-grain, which is full-grain with the surface sanded off and a new finish sprayed on, then genuine leather, which is a split from the lower layer of the same hide with a grain embossed into it, then bonded leather, which is leather dust and offcuts glued into a sheet on a fabric backing. Genuine is the second-worst of the four, and it is the one printed in gold on the insole precisely because shoppers read it as an assurance. The sole is Blake-stitched, so the whole shoe holds on thread rather than adhesive and any competent cobbler can cut the stitch, lift the worn sole and put a new one on.

• 1.4 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned upper, thickness to ISO 2589
• Grain uncorrected and unprinted, confirmed by microscopy to ISO 17131
• Vegetable tanned, chromic oxide nil by ISO 5398, so no chromium of any valency
• Hexavalent chromium below 3 mg per kg by ISO 17075-1, tested anyway because dyes are the other route in
• Blake-stitched natural rubber cup sole, 8 mm, resoleable four or five times
• Vegetable-tanned leather footbed that takes the shape of your foot
• Solid brass eyelets, not plated steel that flakes at the rim
• No split, no bonded or PU leather, no corrected grain, no glued-only sole
• The vamp will crease across the flex point in the first month and the colour will deepen unevenly where your hands and the weather reach it. Veg-tan also water-marks. If you want a shoe that looks the same in year three, this is the wrong shoe.