What Is Latigo Leather?

Latigo leather is the name for a style or type of leather made in a very specific way to create leather with some very specific properties. It's fantastic for shoes or boots. Latigo is beautiful, ages and patinas incredibly well, but is also durable enough for working footwear.

Latigo is a type of vegetable-tanned leather, but is considered "greasier" than other vegetable-tanned leathers such as harness or bridle. It's a pull-up leather, but will usually come at a premium compared to many pull-up leathers for reasons we'll cover soon.

If a pair of heritage boots in Latigo caught your eye, here's what you want to know about the leather they're made from.

Latigo Leather Is Vegetable-Tanned, But Heavily Oiled

Latigo leather is a vegetable-tanned leather, meaning it's tanned using extracts from trees and other plant matter that contain tannin. The process takes longer than using a chromium tanning bath, and uses more expensive materials, but yields a richer color and stronger product.

The kind of leather that you get depends on what the tannery does from there, as every type or style of leather follows a recipe to create leather with specific properties.

The defining characteristic of Latigo leather is that it is heavily stuffed with oils and waxes, far more than harness or bridle leathers are. While harness and bridle leather does get modestly oil-stuffed, it's more for texture than anything else; Latigo gets fully permeated.

The result is a slightly greasy feel to the touch, but also the pull-up effect. In essence, it's a vegetable-tanned pull-up leather. Like other pull-up leathers, caring for Latigo is very easy but you also get the beautiful patina with age like you would with other veg-tanned leather boots.

Why Is Latigo Better Than Other Pull-Up Leathers?

Plenty of other boots are made with a pull-up leather, that's true...but the difference is that most Latigo leathers are going to be of much higher quality.

Here's why.

Most pull-up leather, by volume, is chrome-tanned leather that's produced in fairly large quantities for mass-market bootmakers. While this isn't to say it's a bad product, it's more to say that compromises get made at scale because they have to be.

Another thing to bear in mind is that since vegetable tanning takes so long, fewer tanneries use it as their primary tanning method.

What this means is tanneries that specialize in it are a lot more selective about their hides; they tend to produce less of it and what they do ship out is usually of much higher quality than modern chrome tanneries that are looking to move a lot of product to customers that demand a lot of product.

What you'll definitely notice is that most pull-up leathers are soft to the touch and very pliable for new boots. That will mean that they get very soft indeed with a bit of wear, and that's a problem if you want your boots to give you support in the ankle and elsewhere.

Latigo, since it is a vegetable-tanned leather, is going to feel more substantial than typical pull-up leather and will usually be a little more expensive in the bargain...but they will be so much more worth it.

Why Get Latigo Leather Boots?

Latigo leather boots have the best of both worlds. You get the durability and the patina that develops with a vegetable-tanned leather boot or shoe and the ease of maintenance of a pull-up leather.

Since it's a heavily oiled leather, Latigo just needs to be oiled or lightly greased every few weeks to keep it in top condition. It's easy to waterproof, and resists moisture well as the leather is permeated with oils and waxes. Adding a leather oil or leather grease will make it very resistant to the elements in all but the wettest conditions.

Shining the leather is easy. When you oil or grease it, buff the toe and the heel to get a dull shine. You might not get the high gloss mirror shine of polished shoes, but you'll get close and your boots will look amazing.

However, they won't lose structure as easy as softer leathers. If you want a pair of boots that can handle the office as well as the backcountry, a quality pair of Latigo leather boots will do it.