Red Wing Shoes at Bread & Butter

Our friends at Red Wing shoes were in Berlin this week to attend the Bread & Butter show. The brand presented its new highlights for the next Spring Summer season. Amongst many other highlights we hereby present the finest shots from their L.O.C.K. booth. Please beware of the new hand-sewn boat moc (made in Maine), the new Chukka in the Wabasha family and the blueberry boat shoe. Enjoy!

Red Wing Visit - Update II

Our main man Matthijs at Red Wing Shoes had some serious fun in Minnesota the last couple of days. He will post about a lovely vintage car show he visited in Hastings tomorrow. In the mean time our German colleague Fred sent us some traditional Red Wing pottery and one of his latest vintage treasures: old stars (and stripes). Stay tuned.

Europeans by Yamandu

Our friend Yamandu Roos is currently traveling in Scotland for his ongoing project called 'Europeans'. As always he travels alone, mostly driving his red Peugeot 205 called the "Eagle". On his trips he takes photographs of the people he meets and the European landscapes he crosses. Yamandu does it the oldfashioned way: without a digital camera so the output remains a mystery until he is back in Amsterdam. The result of his previous trips around Europe is simply amazing and can be seen on his Flickr page.

For his current trip to Scotland Yamandu took a pair of Red Wing Shoes 877's with him. He is giving them a rough time in the highlands. Luckily he takes pictures regularly with his phone. We have already seen him ride horses, walk through the mud and pick wild garlic. Follow Yamandu on his ongoing Europeans project with us through twitter and his website.

Red Wing vs. Uwe Afferden

Our Red Wing friend Fred from Germany (local agent for brands like Red Wing and Nigel Cabourn) has probably one of the coolest showrooms we have ever seen so far. He represents our beloved shoe brand in a store by Uwe van Afferden in Dusseldorf where he is surrounded by incredible design, interior and all kinds of must haves like Roberu, Levi's Vintage and customized Red Wing shoes.

Have a look at his custom Red Wing Iron Ranger which he gave a black toe and heel cap. Ridiculously cool right? Whenever you visit the German city promise us you will drive an extra block to be overwhelmed by this amazing store and the way it fits the Red Wing product. Thanks to Fred for the inspiration.

Custom Branded Engineer

A while back we posted about custom Iron Ranger shoes. Master tanner Andy Rhein, of S.B. Foot Tannery, knows a thing or two about custom shoes. He had several completely unique pairs made. Andy is always very enthusiastic and immediately explained how he tanned the leather and got the shoes made to his specifications.

When I received a tour today, he was wearing a pair of custom Engineers. It is made from bull leather. This is a male cow, used not for meat but for breeding. Their hide is much thicker than normal steer and the leather has a special texture to it. The hide was put in the ground for 5 months, dug up, cleaned and dyes were added. This is basically the way leather was tanned 500 years ago. He got the leather cut in a way that the branding marks are covering the instep and the toe area of his boots. Amazing. .Thanks Andy for your time!

On the way to Red Wing

In 30 min I am off to Red Wing. Quite exciting to go there for the second time. I am going to visit the factory, the tannery and have some interesting meetings. Hope to learn more about leather and product development. I will keep you posted. The picture above is a view over Red Wing and the "barn bluf". It was taken between 1865 and 1890 by Charles A. Zimmerman. I will keep you posted.

Red Wing at BBB

Red Wing shoes showed their Spring Summer collection 2011 at Bread & Butter in Berlin. The collection was full of new summer orientated styles. Absolute favorites from our side were amongst others: Light suede Oxfords, new Boat shoes and a lovely gray suede Round toe, as shown by Rene below.

Minnesota Day 4

S.B. Foot Tannery is a magical place for producing leather. Big thanks to Daryl Mark - with more than 30 years of experience - for investing the time to learn us everything about the tanning process. After filling fifteen notebook pages and taking at least six hundred pictures, we can almost turn a steer hide into a premium piece of leather ourselves. Almost...

Tomorrow we will fly back to Amsterdam - a shame really, because we would like to stay for another week for inspiration and training. There is only one thing that we are not going to miss very much: the coffee… Translate "slootwater" anywhere online and you will have an accurate description of what we think it tastes like. ;-)

We will publish more in-depth info pictures of our adventures here in Minnesota as soon as possible. Big thanks to Red Wing Shoes and Tenue de Nimes for making it possible to travel to the work boot capital of the world.

Minnesota Day 3

We had a busy schedule to look forward to so we got up early. Not exactly a textbook case of rise and shine, we were however ready for action after another American breakfast. We visited "Plant 2" which is the current Red Wing Shoes factory where we were guided through all the different divisions of the manufacturing process. This place has an astonishing maximum production capacity of around 8,000 pairs a day. Crazy. Some of the machines that are still in use are more than a 100 years old. For example, the triple-stitch Puritan sewing machine was already patented in 1893. We spoke to an elderly man, a retired employee, who had operated this machinery for 44 years. After retirement, he recently got called back because of his extensive knowledge of the machine and he still enjoyed every single day. This is living the brand to the maximum, wouldn't you agree?

After a boxed lunch at the Red Wing Shoes HQ we were taken on an in-depth tour of the Red Wing Shoes office and brand store. Again, a very inspiring day! Tomorrow we are going to the S.B. Foot Tannery. We will keep you posted.

Minnesota Day 2

The weather was much better today… We drove out of Siren where we stayed for the night and headed further south.
With the shining, some good ol' country music blaring from the speakers we drove through the wilderness (we even spotted a black bear!) and into farm country: wide open spaces, huge fields and herds of cows dotted across the land. After a few hours, we made a short stop in a small town called Amery where an old guy gave us the advice to drive to Stillwater - there would be some nice antique shops. A sound piece of advice. We only bought a vintage case for shoecare, but we might head back there and do some more shopping.
Finally in Red Wing we ended the day at a BBQ with the Red Wing Shoes lifestyle crew, playing some games, enjoying a good burger and a local beer while talking about… Shoes.

Minnesota Day 1

It was a busy day in Minnesota. Yesterday we arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, where we rented a ridiculous GMC truck. Being a bit jetlagged, we still decided then and there to drive 200 miles to Duluth while trying to keep our eyes open. It seemed only a short distance - until we converted the distance in miles to the distance in kilometers, that is. Still, we're young and were full of caffeine, so there was no stopping us.

This morning we visited the Duluth Pack manufactory. We were given a great tour around the factory and the store by the very kind Molly Solberg and topped it off with a great lunch at Northern Water Smokehaus with fabulous sandwiches (more on that later). Thanks to the rain we spent a big part of the afternoon browsing 2 antiques shops around Canal Park to find some interior items for our new shop. Blessed with a vintage American flag and some very old tools (like a log roller) for the new store we moved southwards towards Red Wing… Stay tuned...