^
Indeed. Gets on my goat when the Trads express horror at something 'Made in Amercia from Imported Materials'. It was ever thus and was and is not necessarily a signifier of an inferior product. Quite the opposite in pretty much all cases. Much of the cloth for the finest suits sold on Madison Avenue in the golden age would have come from Huddersfield, Halifax, Genoa etc. without even mentioning appellation-controlled products like Harris and Donegal tweeds etc.

The current Brooks Oxford cloth actually stand up really well against that used twenty years ago and is certainly better than that used ten years ago.

Apologies for going off-topic.

Those blue shoes in the foreground were also one of the styles made by the Czech state shoe company until the fall of the wall. Almost every town in UK had a low end shoe store where you could buy those in blue or navy canvas with a super light sponge moulded sole. In around 78-80 I used to wear the blue ones to school. They cost £4.99 from James & James shoe warehouse in a run down suburb of Bournemouth (that might as well have been behind the iron curtain it was that depressing), but lasted maybe a couple of months at best as the sponge soles would disintegrate. We called them bumpers and they were worn by the three or four kids who also wore second hand suits to school.

The same company made the classic black and oxblood monkey boots and pigksin hush puppies much beloved of revival mods in 79.

Actually I found a store selling the canvas shoes again for £12.99 a pair in the back streets of the old part of Milton Keynes.

I was tempted...

Thank you, Weejun! lol

There's a pair of black Sanders hi tops size UK 10.5 on Ebay.co.uk if anyone's interested.

A nod of the old College-Boy cropped head to Mr. Jesmond.

A Brother is a Brother.

jim

Moose any pics of your GBX? See how they're standing up.

I'm constantly tempted to try a pair as a knockabout alternative to desert boots. How about sizing issues?