Leather sole: advantages and disadvantages in everyday life. They see off the shoes: a few words about leather soles Shoes with leather soles

• Shoes with leather soles are pleasant to wear and comfortable for the feet, as they allow air to pass through, “as they say, the legs breathe”, and also makes it possible not to retain moisture in the shoes, since the feet may sweat when walking.
• At the same time, when walking on a wet road, the leather sole absorbs moisture, which is harmful for this type of sole and leads to damage, more on that later.
• When walking on a particularly rough surface such as asphalt, concrete, the leather sole is quickly erased.

So, we see that the advantages of shoes with leather soles are quite significant, but if you do not take into account the disadvantages, then after some time after not acquiring, you can be very upset that expensive and beloved shoes will become unusable.

From the above, you can see that there are two main enemies for such shoes, these are moisture and bad roads.

What to do to protect the leather sole from rapid deterioration?

1 First advice: do not walk on a bad and wet road, but only on carpets, parquet or tiles.
Indeed, this is not always possible.

2 Then the second and most optimal advice will suit you: after purchasing the shoes, take care to install the outsole on the sole. You can also hear another name for such a repair - prevention or rollback.

These are rubber soles that will be glued to your soles in a shoe repair shop.

Interestingly, some stores even sell shoes with leather soles and branded soles for them, if the buyer wants to install them after a while, he can do it in the workshop and with his own soles.

And you can do it yourself, but of course this requires certain knowledge and skills. (Who is interested in watching mastery lessons)

Of course, it should be borne in mind that not all shoe repair masters will be able to beautifully and efficiently install prevention, so if you have expensive shoes, then try to find a workshop where they make high-quality repairs and where they can take into account your wishes.

For example, owners of expensive shoes often ask me to install prophylaxis not just as standard, but somehow unusual, so as not to catch the eye.

There are different options, for example, I recently installed a sole where the base of the edge is not even, but arched. Looks good.

Of course, in order to set the outsole beautifully, and even on a leather sole, you need to take into account some nuances that not everyone knows about, but I talk about them in my master classes, which can be found on the page

High-quality men's shoes and boots are often supplied with leather soles. Not all buyers have extensive experience in wearing appropriate shoes, so we decided to write a separate article about leather soles and talk in detail about their pros, cons, and the nuances associated with them.

Benefits of leather soles

As a rule, shoes and boots with leather soles allow the feet to "breathe" better - of course, all other things being equal. The rubber outsole is essentially breathable, while the leather outsole boasts breathability. In winter, of course, this moment is not fundamental - moreover, additional thermal insulation can be considered a plus. However, in summer, shoes with leather soles are often more comfortable than shoes with soles made of rubber and synthetic materials (polyurethane in particular). In addition, it is very suitable for wearing in the office.

Another advantage of leather soles is their classic and usually austere appearance.

Classic masculine style expert Michael Anton writes that "except for white suede shoes, shoes that are supposed to be paired with a tie should not have rubber soles."

However, in fairness, it must be admitted that today you can find shoes with thin rubber soles that look strict and neat - and, accordingly, are suitable for pairing with suits and ties.

Are leather soles lighter? There is no single answer to this question. The lightness of the sole depends on its thickness, as well as on the features of production. For example, oak bark tanned soles are lighter than regular, more budget-friendly leather soles. Soles made of synthetic materials can be both light and heavy. Some leather soles are also notable for their noticeable weight and massiveness - for example, if we are talking about double leather soles (double leather soles), which also sometimes make the breaking in of boots longer and harder than usual. True, dual soles have some advantages: they are more water resistant, provide better thermal insulation, and soften the impact of stones when walking (this can be true if you sometimes walk on gravel and rocky roads).

Disadvantages of leather soles

Unfortunately, leather soles are very vulnerable to moisture. Of course, nothing bad will happen if you walk in shoes with leather soles along the wet pavement several times a month, but if you have to walk or jump through puddles, the sole can quickly become unusable. In addition, its failure can be significantly accelerated by regular walking in snow, snowdrifts, liquid mud and slush, especially with the participation of salt or other reagents.

To protect the leather sole from moisture, you can put a prophylaxis on it - a rather thin rubber lining, which shoemakers sometimes call the coaster. It is placed not on the entire area of ​​the sole, but on that part of it that comes into contact with the ground or sidewalk. You can do without prevention if you are going to wear shoes only indoors and outdoors in dry weather.

Prevention on leather soles

It is worth adding that the toe of leather soles can wear out quite quickly. The rate at which they wear out depends on the type of gait you walk, as well as the design and construction of the shoe, the characteristics of the sole, how much you wear the pair, and the road surface. In order to protect the toes of leather soles from wear, you can put metal heels (“jambs”) on them - they are fastened with glue and small screws.

Metal toe caps

Such heels can be combined with prevention - but keep in mind that it is difficult to put them on your own (as well as prevention), this requires a lot of experience. Accordingly, for the installation of prevention and heels, you should contact a shoemaker with a good reputation.

After the murder of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov in Ankara - or more precisely, after the photo of Burhan Ozbilidzhi won the main prize of World Press Photo 2017 - my favorite photographer Sergey Maksimishin posted on my facebook :

More about the photo of the year. Worn out shoes are the main thing there. The terrorist triumphs: he shot at the function and killed the function. But we see what the criminal does not see: a man is killed. A man in worn shoes.

Here Sergey Yakovlevich repeats the mistake of any person who prefers to get acquainted with shoes with leather soles from photographs. What he calls "trodden shoes" and what makes his heart ache is the normal state of a leather sole. If you buy a new pair of leather-soled shoes and walk around town in them three or four times, the soles will look exactly the same. And this will not at all prevent them from delighting you for the next few years and from time to time arousing compassion from the photographers to whom you will show your soles.

In the UK, boots with Goodyear welt construction have the potential to have several lives. Almost all manufacturers offer a refurbishment procedure: you send worn-out shoes to the factory where they were made; there the sole is completely changed to a new one, the upper of the shoe is also brought into some semblance of order, and you get practically new shoes that do not need to be broken in. Such a procedure usually costs between 80 and 150 British pounds, excluding postage: accordingly, it makes sense if your pair cost 400 feet; if the shoes cost £150, it would be cheaper to throw them away and buy a new pair. The sole is changed up to three times - so sometimes the shoes live quietly for 20 years.

Here, for example, is the cost of repairs at the Grenson factory:

The speed with which leather soles are rubbed depends not so much on the quality and dressing of the leather, but on the characteristics of the gait of a particular person. If you live far from Northampton, where the production of normal English boots is historically concentrated, the problem of leather soles that wear out too quickly is solved in a simple and inexpensive way: in any shoe shop they can stick a sole on a leather sole (in Moscow this is called the word "prevention", in St. Petersburg they say "roll") of reinforced rubber. Whether or not to put soles on leather soles is mostly a religious question: opponents say that the legs stop breathing, and irreparable damage is done to the design of the boot; proponents note that breathing is better through the nose and mouth than through the soles, and that spending $20 on a sole is several times more pleasant than £200 to overhaul a pair.

After the execution of the former deputy of the Russian Duma Denis Voronenkov in Kyiv at the entrance to the Premier Palace, we again got photographs of a corpse in boots with leather soles.

What is interesting: on Voronenkov's feet are expensive (that is, costing somewhere from five hundred pounds sterling against the usual 200-300) and, in a sense, "show off" boots. The leather sole tells us about it. Pay attention to its design: usually on Goodyear welt boots, the top of the shoe, the welt and the leather sole are sewn in such a way that a groove with stitching threads is clearly visible on the bottom of the sole along its circumference: this is called open channel sole stitching - "outsole with open stitching ", if translated very roughly. On the feet of the late Voronenkov - an example of "closed stitching" (respectively, closed channel sole stitching), when the sole, along with the grooves, is closed with an additional decorative layer of leather. This is done for the sake of killing two birds with one stone: firstly, it is beautiful; secondly, boots from the upper price category should differ at least in some way from cheaper counterparts. There is no functional point in closed firmware: when you walk around the city in new shoes several times, the decorative layer of the skin will rub off and the groove with the threads will be exposed (which, again, is clearly visible in the picture).

What open and closed seams on the soles look like:

Finally, some companies (for example, Church "s) fundamentally do not (or tried to do, and then stopped) shoes with closed leather soles. One of the reasons voiced on the Northampton shoemakers forum sounds ridiculous: "we stopped doing that because the number of stupid assholes among customers went off scale: they bought shoes, and when a thin layer of skin was rubbed and a groove with a seam was exposed, they took it for a marriage and returned to the store to make a scandal and replace a pair.

What conclusions can be drawn from this?

1. People who are shot for completely different reasons often prefer leather-soled shoes.

2. The late Voronenkov paid at least twice as much for his shoes as the late Karlov.

3. If you are worried about how you will look in the eyes of the builders after meeting with the killer, take care to buy at least one pair of decent boots in advance.