Fresh Additions & Old Goodies
Our year-end guidebook feature is dedicated to our most cherished content, The Patina Post. Whether you’re new to rebuildable footwear or a seasoned collector, The Patina Post showcases how diverse lifestyles today are reflected in high-quality footwear inspired by and refined from the past. This year, we introduce Nicks Handmade Boots, featuring exclusive adaptations in street-to-work-ready configurations. Tricker's offers a soft-soled approach to an outdoor build, and our go-to backwoods White's provide true handcrafted footwear worn with dutiful intent.
There are many leathers and lifestyles to explore in this year’s patina post, but overall, the story is how our footwear reflects the foundation of our personal style and approach to life’s duties. We recently introduced Nick’s Handmade Boots collaborations and immediately added the Color Theory Pack to our rotations. The Black Cherry Workman Moc’s Color 8 Cypress becomes richer rather than louder, darkening through the creases and flex points, revealing depth in color and grain, while the surface develops a quiet sheen. The Horween Greener Pastures Shackleton on the Jungle Jump Boot surprisingly shifts in the opposite direction. The natural tea-core in an extremely flexible and stout leather offers an immediate spectrum of shades from tan to green to brown throughout the vamp and quarters. The Black Nero Vachetta on our Arch Support Project Military Moc and Unicorn Leather, highlighted on our Tricker’s Super Monkey, both wear quietly, with more noticeable changes in finish and grain. As the color and leathers relax, these develop from high to low at flex points, adding dimension while remaining within the solid black spectrum.
This year, we launched our first WMNs-specific footwear with Tricker’s. To showcase items favored by our female core, these two styles demonstrate how this footwear category suits everyone. The Chestnut Floral Dublin Paula Nomad Chelsea is a lightweight, highly styled piece that brightens and deepens in color as the grain opens. As the waxes of the Dublin and this full vegetable tannage evolve, the floral print gains shine, showing more movement and burnishing on the elegant Victorian pattern that connects to the Chelsea boot lineage and this modern expression. Flipping the script to militaria with a more refined, genteel sensibility, the Monty Chukka collaboration features the Cognac Predator, which starts matte and becomes more expressive with wear and conditioning. Built for durability and designed to improve with age, both leathers develop character without sharp contrast, aging naturally in a balanced, elegant way.
Brown boot styles dominate many wardrobes, and with various iterations of makeup and leather recipes that evolve distinctly, it’s easy to see why. Our White’s Waxed Flesh collaborations consistently offer maintenance-free patina potential, combined with the fierce utility one should expect and style versatility that might be less obvious. Cinnamon and Olive Waxed Flesh are cousin colors—very similar in shade—that break through fairly quickly. The dyed wax thins at high-contact areas, revealing lighter, drier khaki flesh underneath, giving these work boots a layered, work-earned look rather than a uniform fade. One of the most well-documented leathers in our premium niche, Chromexcel, used on our Espresso & Natural Super Monkey Boot, responds well to wear. Each pair develops its own unique, subtle, and level patina early on, making no two look exactly alike. The Dark Rust Chamois on our Tricker’s Monty Chukka changes more gradually, with the nubuck grain softening and the color settling into a burnished rust that appears worn-in without feeling overworked.
