Price: $680-696 Why Buy? The Alden Chukka offers what many consider to be the quintessential chukka boot, and is amazingly comfortable as well. Why Avoid?
Price: $890 [SOLD OUT; Check eBay for Current Prices] Why Buy? The Alden x J Crew PCT might just match the Stan Smith as the
Background Leather outsoles have gone through a bit of a wild ride. The true OG of footwear, leather soles were pretty much the only option
Over the several years I’ve been writing reviews and buying guides, I’ve received plenty of outreach (I love it, by the way, keep it coming!).
Walk into any Alden store, and assuming you have the money to spend, it’s easy to walk out with almost anything in Color 8 or Black shell. You can find the leisure hand sewn in stock all the time. That being said, not everyone wants a pair of eggplant or black loafers. If that sounds like you, and you want to stick with the Alden brand, you need to get into the wild world of rare shells. Among the rarest is this, the Color 4 Leisure Hand Sewn.
The Alden Indy is a boot that needs no introduction. It’s been a staple in Alden’s line up for so long that nobody seems to be certain on exactly when they first released it. The only reference to its history on Alden’s website is that it uses the “Foot Balance” system introduced before the 1970s.
If you’re anything like me a few years back or hundreds of other men, you decided you wanted a pair of nice boots. You know there are really only two options here. The Alden Indy and the Viberg Service Boot.
The one question I often get asked that I don’t answer in reviews is how I pick which shoes to wear. How I style them, when I pick one over the other, etc. With 100wears hitting the one-year mark, I thought it might be worth providing a mini update on the current collection from a personal viewpoint.
As someone who has had more than a reasonable number of shoes pass through his hands, I’ve started to really appreciate having “classic” design. By a classic, I mean a pair of shoes that you know will work. You’ve worn it. Your dad wore it. And, in the case of this pair here, your grandad wore it. When it comes to classic, there is nothing that fits that bill more than the Alden 975, also known as the Alden Longwing or Alden Gunboat.
The Alden Leisure Hand Sewn, or LHS for short, has a bit of a cult following, particularly in the “trad” or “ivy” community. It’s considered the end goal or grail for a lot of people. However, even among the range of $500+ loafers in the LHS line, one in particular stands out to the navy blazer wearing crowd – the unlined shell cordovan model.
Perhaps fittingly, while the lined shell model is available at almost every Alden retailer, the unlined version has traditionally been exclusively offered at another brand associated with the navy blazer, Brooks Brothers. In fact, the shoe wasn’t even branded as an Alden, instead featuring the Brooks Brothers logo throughout and coming in a different box without any hint of the Massachusetts-based shoe company.