The shoes here are a few not even two years old, a pair of heavily mistreated chelseas from the Australian brand RM Williams. An excellent example of the fact that it doesn’t matter if you are buying shoes of good quality as long as you don’t take care of them. Today’s posts show a few pcitures of these, a little like the pictures on the smoke damaged lungs etc available in some countries on cigarette packets as a deterrent example, and also an example of how the shoe can look after 20+ years with proper care.
It was a cobbler in Gothenburg that hade recoeved these shoes from, “it would be good if you could wash them up a bit,” the customer had said. He tore his hair and didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. The owner had owned them for about two years, and never cared for them in any way whatsoever. This has resulted in a dried out leather with several cracks, customer has alsos cratched mainly the toes heavily and also had let several layers of dirt erode into the leather.
Toes from a different angle, where you clearly see both cracks and really deep scratch marks. In Sweden, the RM Williams brand has for some time been a fashion shoe in many circles, and many do not care about their shoes more than that it is important to have the correct brand on them when buying the shoes, so therefore you get to see many neglected shoes from the brand on the Swedish streets.
RM Williams are doing fine shoes, and if one takes care of them, they can instead look like this after more than 20 years of use, that is ten times older than the pair above. These belong to another customer of the cobbler, who had these in for a fourth resole. Certainly the vamp has stretched alot and become quite creased, maybe could have used better shoe trees, but the leather is not close to crack anywhere and the owner expects to get a few more years from these shoes.
