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In Sheep’s Clothing
Column
In Sheep’s Clothing
Mr. Bootblack is a philosopher with distinct views of his own. He earns a living cleaning shoes. Once every two weeks he writes an article about footwear for GDS – and about the wearers.
In Sheep’s Clothing
You would be doing me a great favour if you didn’t talk to me about those Australian boots. I know they are very popular and I don’t begrudge anyone their success. I just don’t want any of them, that’s all. They may be great for surfers to warm their bare feet nicely in with all that sheepskin – but attractive they are not. And does beauty not have a merit all of its own? I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but a nice cover is a nice cover, is it not?
It is winter and winter hangs around a good while in my city. Over the past few days it has still been surprisingly warm – though this just means the snow comes down as rain and shoes get wet either way. Already weeks back my stall switched from being the service point it was to the merchant’s shop it becomes in winter. I sell shoe polish and creams, sprays and insoles and to most of my customers these are hot tips for those in the know despite in fact being quite the opposite: familiar, age-old formulas that are just much harder to find these days because people want to buy everything at the supermarket. I don’t know why this is. After all, supermarkets rarely sell really good products. If you want good haircare products you go to the hairdresser’s (I should know – I have curly hair, very, very labour-intensive curly hair that took a lifelong learning curve and a whole series of good hairdressers to get to grips with). If you want good meat you go to the butcher’s. And if you want good shoe cream you have to go to the cobbler. Or a shoe shop proud of its shoes.
Well anyway, what I really wanted to say is before my thoughts were taught to do tricks and turns like those Australian surfers: boot time is here. And boots are perhaps the biggest puzzle in the history of humanity and civilisation because while men, like women, have several pairs of all types of shoes most people only have one pair of really proper, city-slicking winter boots. Which is funny, because winter boots are always subjected to the harshest tests. And they always get the wettest. And they are always the most uncomfortable when they stop being waterproof. What’s more, proper winter boots do not come cheap, if you don’t mind my saying. Quite the opposite, if they are really proper boots they will probably even be the most expensive footwear in your wardrobe. If you want to wear them every day this generally means either drying them out quickly (please always remember to only air dry at no higher than room temperature) or wearing them the next day still damp. Both sure-fire ways to destroy your boots as quickly as possible.
Come to think of it what this means is: go ahead and buy those hip Aussie boots. You know what? Go for it and buy two pairs!
