Everyone wants the best, but what’s considered “best” is often very subjective. Here’s a pair of camp mocs, for example, from W.C. Russell Moccasin Company – a Wisconsin-based shoe firm that has been making moccasins and boots for outdoorsy folks since 1898. The color on these is a bit flat and the creasing a bit rough. And while Russell Moccasin usually makes shoes from full grain leather, these are made from top-grain, which is the bottom-half of a hide once it’s been split. The upside to top grain is that it doesn’t have any of the blemishes and scars that might be on full grain, but the downside is that it also doesn’t feel as rich and supple. And since the fibers in top grain aren’t as tightly intertwined, the leather can seem a bit airy. You can see Dave Muson of Saddleback Leathers explain it in this video.
Still, I love these mocs. The color has this perfect pitch of reddish brown, which somehow feels more classic and American to me than the usual dark browns and tans such shoes come in. The leather, while not as rich as my Quoddy and Oak Street Bootmaker mocs, also feels better suited for going out to a sports bar on a hot summer afternoon. And if provenance still means anything, I like that these are made by a 116 year-old heritage company with an utterly unpretentious website. Ordering from them feels like ordering from those mail-in catalogs in the ‘90s, where you’d send in a check or well-hidden cash along with a scribbled out form.
When I talked to Jeffery Diduch last year about suit quality, he compared the construction of suits to the making of food. That is – it’s hard to tell with any certainty how a suit has been made, but it’s easy to tell if you like it. And just like a dish, the only thing that’s important is your enjoyment. So for me, while I like my “nicer” camp mocs from Quoddy and Oak Street, these Russell Moccasins have been surprisingly getting more wear. If I think about it like food, sometimes you want a really nice grilled salmon, and sometimes you want a cheap burrito. Both can be enjoyable in their own right. In this way, these Russells are like the burrito of shoes.
(Note, Russell Moccasin’s camp mocs can be ordered custom through Russell Moccasin themselves, but there is a wait time. If you want to go with a standard make, they can be had quicker through Sid Mashburn).
