Boot Talk

Red Wing's Heritage boots have been favored by style bloggers and workwear partisans for several years now. I thought about getting a pair a couple of years ago, and I wrote about certain styles that interested me.

The internet tells me that Red Wings run big (so you should size down) but narrow (so they probably wouldn't be comfortable for me and my widish feet). As it happened, I never got around to trying on any of those boots, but a couple of months later I bought a pair of Wolverine's 1000 Mile Boots, in part because I was able to try them on and found that they have a generously wide fit, even for a shoe labeled as medium width. However, as with Red Wings I did find them to run a half-size large. (This tends to happen with many brands and styles of boots.)

More recently I was thinking about getting a new pair of black lace-up work boots. My Caterpillar Second Shift boots are really comfortable and durable, but they are well worn-in and probably aren't appropriate to wear to work anymore (assuming that I go back to work at some point), and I kind of wanted to find something a little less clunky and a little more refined-looking.

While looking around I discovered a style of Red Wing boots that wasn't available when I was looking two years ago, that had already been discontinued. On Amazon they were priced at about half what they cost new, so I decided to give them a try. Remembering their sizing I ordered a half-size down from what I usually get, and they were plenty long enough, but as I'd suspected they were too narrow to wear comfortably.

I briefly entertained the idea of trying to stretch them, but ultimately decided to return them. But what could I get instead? I'd also come across boots from Frye that looked almost exactly like the Red Wings and which were also made in USA. They were somewhat more expensive, but Amazon was in the process of closing down its shoe site Endless, and to entice customers to shop the shoe section on Amazon they offered a 25% discount for signing up for emails. By using that code I was able to get the Frye boots for only about $15 more than I'd paid for the Red Wings. These are also offered only in medium width, but they are wide enough to be wearable. (From looking at that last link, it appears I managed to just miss a substantial price increase, which is kind of an extra bonus.)

I didn't like the laces that the Frye boots came with, but I was able to find flat textile laces that look just like the ones on the Red Wing boots. Since it's finally fall for real, I started wearing them this week, and they hardly even needed breaking in. By the way, I found that I didn't have to size down with the Frye boots; I got the same size as I wear in dress shoes.

By the way, if you like Red Wing boots and are interested in seeing them and trying them on, they are doing a sort of "trunk show" at Brooks Brothers locations nationwide this weekend, following a similar, smaller-scale event last fall. The information doesn't appear on the BB website, but I learned about it here and you can call your local store to check on it.

My message to Red Wing: please consider offering at least some of your styles (besides the Iron Ranger) in wider widths, because from my personal experience, what you call medium is more like narrow. More widths equals more sales.