So I finally got around to putting the Dubbin to all my pairs of DMs. I have 8 pair, broken down as follows:
ENGLISH-MADE
Brown classic shoe, ~2002
Black square-toed casual shoe (doesn’t even look like Docs), Nov 2001
Black industrial steel toe boot, mid-2005 (my daily work wear for the last 2 1/2 years)
NON-ENGLISH MADE
*Brown industrial steel toe (as above), mid-2006
*Black industrial steel-toe shoe (otherwise as above), mid-2007
Low fashionable Euro-style brown lace-up, 2006
*Brown and black slip-on industrial moc, 2004
Classic black 1460 boots, ~2003
The steel toes all came from the fact that the company paid for a pair of safety shoes every year, so I stockpiled – but they are a lot less important than they used to be now that I’m not doing warehouse work anymore, so at least three pair of those are probably going into storage. I’m not spending nearly enough time in the Irish bars anymore, so the classic Docs look is less useful to me than the days when we closed the pub at 2 AM on a regular basis. And those 1460s seem to be just a half-size too big, it seems – they pull the socks right off my heel when I try to take them off and they seem to have just a tiny bit too much room in back when work and laced up. And since I don’t need the toe protection anymore, I would really like to replace them.
Which leads me to the question: while I would like a shiny new pair of 1460s, are DMs from some sweatshop in Thailand or Vietnam or China really, you know, Docs? (Most of the classic UK Doc-wearing subcultures have said no – punks and skins and the like have gone to something else.) Would I be better off with a pair of Solovairs (assuming I’m willing to buy shoes from another continent without trying them on)? Is it the name? Is it the style? Is it more important to just have a good solid pair of clunky working-class industrial footwear made classic through its ugliness, irrespective of name or brand or location? Or do I just want the Docs because they’ve been the anchor of my footwear supply since 2000?
(If anybody knows where there’s a pair of never-worn 8-eye cherry 1460s in size UK 11, let me know…)