A couple of years ago, I asked for a pair of STEEL brand boots for Christmas. This came as something of a shock to my family, as I’d worn Doc Martens shoes and boots nearly exclusively for almost 22 years.
The truth be told, the last two pairs of Docs I bought started falling apart in less than a year. In one case, the soles actually started splitting where they’d bend as I walked. In the second case, the reinforcements around the eyelets started falling off.
Contrast this to the second pair of Docs I ever owned: a pair of plain black 3-hole Oxfords. I bought those shoes at Abbadabbas in Little Five Points shortly after graduating high school and wore them almost every single day for nine years. I only ended up throwing them away because all of the leather inside of the shoe had worn off, and the sole was so thin that the “air sole” bits were starting to stick out. Sure, I paid around $130 for them back in 1989, but I probably wore them over 3,000 times. I wore them to work at my Dad’s warehouse every day. I wore them the entire time I was in college. I even wore them to several jobs after graduation. It was the best damn $130 I ever spent!
So anyway, I chalked up Doc Martens decline in quality to the fact that the company ceased manufacturing its shoes in England in 2001 and outsourced their manufacture to China and Thailand. Imagine my joy when I found out the other day that Doc Martens started making shoes in the UK again in late 2007!
The “British Doc Martens” shoes are sold under the “Vintage Originals” product line and are made from “scratch” at the Cobbs Lane Factory in Wollaston. This isn’t a case where all the parts are made in China and assembled in England… the entire shoe is made in the UK to Doc Martens’ original specifications.
I think I just might add a new pair of 3-hole Oxfords to my Christmas List!
Check it out at Doc Martens’ official site here.