These cordovan full brogue oxfords are made with Horween Color 8 cordovan uppers sewn with rust colored A&E Tex 70 thread. They are lined with undyed vegetable tanned calf. The soles are J.R. Rendenbach covered with Vibram cat’s paw. The leather heels are topped with Vibram heel caps. It’s all put together with welted construction using a hand dyed welt and beige hand sewing threads attaching the welt to the leather sole.
These oxfords feature a few interesting details worth pointing out.
Why rubber over leather? Leather is a good material for both soles and heels because it shapes to the last and foot. Good soling leather is tough and flexible, but it has its limitations. Leather does not insulate as well as rubber, which can mean cold feet on cold pavement. The rubber has better grip on a wider variety of surfaces and helps reduce the amount of water the sole is exposed to when the ground is wet. The rubber heel cap also grips a wide range of surfaces and is very hard-wearing. Both the sole cover and heel cap are easily replaced when worn. It makes for a good all-purpose, all-weather shoe. There’s no one shoe to rule them all and it’s nice to have the right shoe for the job if you can. You might choose to wear these instead of your leather-only soles in certain circumstances.
Most, if not all, cordovan is top finished, not drum dyed. When cut, you can see the color only slightly penetrates the top surface. The undyed original color, (typically a light brown) is then visible. That cross section is usually not shown on the shoe upper, but is often hidden by skiving and folding the edges.
Cordovan can sometimes be difficult to fold, and the fact that it is finished flesh-side out makes skiving problematic for the integrity of the material. I have found the thickness of Horween’s cordovan to be highly variable – from 1.2mm to 2.2mm in the same piece! I used the thick parts of the material for the quarters, and rather than skive and fold, I rounded and finished the exposed cross section. With the right treatment, it appears as if it were skived and folded – which only actually occurs where the top of the outside counter captures the backs of the quarters. (See above.)
What even is “cordovan?” It’s *both* a special piece of horse leather *and* a color. (I’ve written about this before.) Horween actually calls this reddish brown color “Color 8.” Maybe this is because in the 1930 edition of “A Dictionary of Color” by Maerz and Paul, Cordovan is listed as a color on page 39, Plate 8, Color Sample H8.
I don’t often dye the welts I use for welted construction, but I needed to figure out how to match the color when dying the blunt cut undyed top line. The “cordovan” colored dye was just brown, lacking even a hint of red. What matched most closely for me was using “burgundy” dye and then rubbing it with an uncolored oil and wax finish. This darkened the burgundy considerably and made the color I wanted.
Leaving aside for the moment all the problems with color correction, lighting and digital displays, you can still get a good idea of the color matching. It’s very difficult to distinguish the part of the topline that I dyed from the rest of the material below the stitching. The dyed and finished welt looks a bit more red because the undyed welt is much lighter in color than the undyed cordovan. I expect the welt to darken in time, but I think it’s a good match to start.
Cordovan is an interesting and unusual leather. The special attention required to the material thickness, skiving, folding and finishing make it an additional challenge to work with.