Over the past few years we have been tinkering with slight changes to the Wilson Boot to develop the “2.0.” The changes we’ve made are nearly all focused on the interior construction & manufacturing process, with very little differences to the outside of the boot. As we were finalising the first production run of the Wilson Boot 2.0s, I took a trip to Italy to document how our footwear is made.

The factory is in North Eastern Italy, less than an hour from the entrance to “Parco Nazionale delle Dolomiti Bellunesi,” the Italian mountain range, the Dolomites. The factory is family owned and run by experts of outdoor & performance footwear. Essentially, if you want to make a hiking boot, this is where to do it.

Beginning with cutting the materials, each pair is handmade start to finish. The pattern pieces needed to create each boot are made into metal dies/knife sets and pressed individually into the leather hide or other material the boot is made from. Each size gets its own set of dies needed. Pictured below is a lining piece of a new boot being cut & an exploded view of a complete outer. After every piece is cut, we move on to sewing them together.

Once the pieces are sewn & hardware put on, the boot is given its shape. Straight out of sewing, the boot is completely unstructured and separate from the lining, aside from where the seams are. The next step here is to glue the outer & lining together, this too is done by hand individually. Before the glue is set, a last is placed inside the boot and put in a special machine designed to give it the shape needed.

At this stage, the laces are put in and tied to make sure nothing is interfering with the lacing in the remainder of the process. The underside and bottom edges of the boot are sanded carefully before attaching the rubber strip. A strip of masking tape is put on, following the sole as a guide to mark where to place the rubber strip.

The bottom of the boot gets a layer of heat activated glue to adhere the rubber strip to the suede. The rubber strip is hand applied following the glue and cut with scissors to the perfect length needed to go fully around the boot. Once the rubber is on, the boot goes through an oven to set the glue.

Next, the boot is placed into the sole again to add another strip of tape, marking where to sand the rubber we just added. The rubber gets sanded to create a better surface for the sole to adhere to when glued and pressed. The Vibram sole is then fully attached to the upper and the last removed.

The boots then immediately get inspected, cleaned of any glue marks and re-tied according to our “factory lacing,” found in our “How to Lace the Wilson Boot” Newsstand article & printed guide each pair comes with. The start to finish process takes about a week to complete each pair. The completed pairs are then boxed & shipped to our LA warehouse.

The Wilson Boot 2.0 is launching this Friday in our two evergreen colourways, Beige Suede & Black Ballistic Nylon. In the photo of the Beige Suede pairs on the factory floor below, the pair with the tonal laces is my personal pair & roughly 3 years old. The pair with the red laces, roughly 3 minutes.