It was quite a dome. Lots of miles (trail hiking and pavement), and they are now my favorites.

I always appreciated the Van Cleef makeup from S&S. I really wanted a lighter color engineer boot. While I was waiting for my order to be made (long Wesco leadtime) S&S released some Mister Lous in Maryam Natural horsebutt. I just happened to mention to my contact that they looked great, and she offered to change my leather if I wanted since Wesco hadn’t started the actual build. I’m a sucker for Maryam horsebutt and that color the natural turns is a favorite, so I jumped at the chance. Kudos to S&S for being flexible, suggesting it, and just all around being amazing.

I was a little unlucky before ordering this pair and super lucky with this pair. I mis-sized Mister Lous….twice because of my high instep, and still the 12E in the Mister Lou Horsehide still was too tight across my instep. Not just for getting on, but pain after I’d wear them for awhile and it never got better after many wears. I was worried about these because I had ordered these before I finally gave up on the 12E in the standard horsehide. But this pair in the horsebutt fit great. A noticeable difference in the instep versus both 12E mister lou horsehides I tried. Maybe I was just lucky, but I’ll definitely take it.

I actually ordered these for some #2, but it was right around the time that Wesco kept extending and extending their production times. Ended up taking almost exactly a year. So they sat in a box in my closet for 10 months. But S&S was super communicative through the process.

Pretty much every week these boots went on a several mile trail hike up and down a mountain and then walked a lot of pavement to and from my train to work on city sidewalks.

Break in was pretty easy. The sole was a little stiff starting out, but the horsebutt was great. Enough resistance that you knew you were wearing something substantial (in a very good way) but still moved with me basically from the beginning. I’m honestly a bit baffled by the color change. I thought/hoped they would more or less end up this color, but they are very light under the strap, which makes me think the color isn’t from conditioner (I conditioned under the strap same as everywhere else) but it also doesn’t make sense that it’s just rain and sun either because I mainly (not always) wore my pants over the shaft. There is a small color difference in the shaft and the rest of the boot and the texture of the shaft is different from friction, but the tops and bottoms of the uppers had different exposure and still look pretty similar. I did have to condition a few times (roughly every other month) and mainly used Bick but for the final shot I tried VSC instead. I think the VSC cleaned them better and add a hint more shine.

General guidance for the last that I’ve heard is down a half size and up a width. Based on my experience I mentioned with Mister Lous, I went TTS length and up a width, and I think they fit as well as they could have. I have skinny legs, so the straps were always all the way tightened at the top, and given my instep it was one slot looser for the waist strap. I’m not sure I’d recommend going against the conventional wisdom on length like I did, but given my instep I can’t imagine that I could have gotten a better fit for me with than this size for this last.

Love the design. My high instep prevents too many crazy dramatic roles in the vamp, but I like that the unstructured nature of the boots is now visible. I think they are quite a handsome boot.

Tough. V bar doesn’t look like the best traction, but other than a couple steep hikes in full mud, I never had any slips at all. Based on the wear I’m seeing, I think these are going to last quite some time. I’ll keep these soles until they need to be replaced (no desire to make a change early).

This was great. Last year’s dome was a bit of a disappointment for me since I broke a toe one month in and wasn’t back to my normal self as far as being able to wear boots or go on real hikes until the event was basically half over. This year I had a pair of boots I loved and loved to wear often, and my feet felt great in them all the way.