There are many ways to wear out a pair of shoes. The ones shown above are on one of the crash test dummies in Volvo Cars’ Safety Center in Gothenburg. A few vintage derbys from the American brand Nettleton, who have been involved in hundreds of crashes over the years and as apparent received a lot of hits.
At Volvo Cars (my new employer, I work at Corporate Communications here nowadays, more about this is in an upcoming Italigente Uncovered post on why I left the shoe industry professionally) they have a family with crash test dummies, women, men, children of different ages. They only have blue collar clothing, like a combined t-shirt and shorts, but on the feet the dolls have real shoes to make the tests as authentic as possible. The men have in many cases old American classic shoes from the 70’s and 80’s, which after years of crashes (here there are one or to two crashes every day eleven months a year) have been really damaged, and since the leather seems to never have been treated it’s very dry. They undoubtedly have a special kind of patina.
