What is Spokane Leather?

Today we are launching what we hope will become another major leather program for us, similar to the Wickett double stuffs and Seidel 1964s. We are calling it the Spokane tannage as we feel it embodies the evolution we have seen here in the PNW space over the past 10 years or so, where these boots have branched out from wildland fire and heavy-duty work to become great options for all-around use, like working hard, tromping around a job site, going out to grab dinner, having a date night or anything your day or night has in store for you.

This leather is meant to be extremely versatile and meet the needs of most use cases, short of fighting fires, digging trenches, or attending a truly formal event. In short, it will handle a lot of use cases.

We started working on this project with Horween early last year and we are extremely grateful for their support in coming up with this leather. It started with Chromepak as the baseline, a leather Horween used to sell heavily for work applications including footwear, and even as a gasket seal material for industrial applications like truck engines, generators, and other heavy machinery. Chromepak is great, but we wanted a smoother hand feel, more visual interest as it ages, and the ability to wax the flesh side to offer both smooth and waxed flesh in these colors. As a result, this waxed flesh is struck through, an interesting option that allows mixing and matching textures.

To differentiate it from Chromepak, it does not feel as heavily waxed and also goes through a vegetable re-tan which is where you see the pull-up coming out. In our opinion, you get many of the durability benefits of Chromepak in addition to the visual interest of a heritage leather that will patina interestingly and desirably over time. To make it plain that this fits between our heavy-duty work leathers and our more conventional heritage ones, this leather comes in a 7 oz. weight with a relatively high temper making it tough but a relatively quick break-in. A large amount of oils and waxes gives it water resistance without the same threat of residue and weeping. It's now available and I hope you'll take a look:

This is the description directly from Horween:

"Spokane is a new Horween leather that combines traditional formulas with new technology. 

The original versions of this article originated in the early 1900’s as a 'mechanical leather' used to make oil seals.  The reason this particular leather was used for this purpose is that it has superior durability and heat resistance. Even with today’s seals, the drawback of synthetic materials is that the seals fail and completely blow out of place.  However, when the ChromePak leather began to fail, it leaked, so users had time to shut down the pumping system before a complete failure of the seal occurred.  

Spokane takes the base tannage of our Chromepak article and introduces a modern vegetable re-tannage that allows the leather to wear comfortably and age beautifully. 

After re-tanning the leather, the Spokane is authentically hot-stuffed with a blend of oils and waxes.  The proprietary blend developed for this leather provides a rich hand along with great color depth on the finished leather.

Spokane is a full grain, aniline leather that is incredibly tough and the footwear will look great for many years.

Spokane:

• Full Grain
• Combination Tanned:  Old world formulations dating back to the early 1900’s and updated with a retannage using modern day technology.
• Hot Stuffed
• Aniline
• Super strong and tough..great durability
• Will age beautifully due to the introduction of the vegetable retannage and rich blend of oils and waxes introduced in the hot stuffing process."

You'll see additional colorways coming out over the coming year and I hope you will give this tannage a shot. we are confident you'll love it. The Honey is a new color developed in conjunction with this leather and looks fantastic on both the waxed and smooth side while the Brown and Black are staples that will serve you well. 

Shop The Overlander in Spokane Leather