Oxblood Boots

The colour we named the brand after, and the boots that started it all.

Ask anyone what sits at the heart of skinhead clothing, and they'll tell you the same thing: the boots. Before the Ben Shermans, before the braces, before the Crombie went on for a night at the dance, it was a pair of heavy working boots that marked you out. And if those boots were oxblood, all the better.

Boots built for work, worn with pride

The original skinheads of late-sixties Britain didn't buy their look out of a catalogue. It came off the building sites and the dockyards: standard shirts, jeans, braces and heavy work boots, sharpened up in the evening with influences borrowed from the Jamaican rude boys who'd arrived with the Windrush generation.^1,2 The boot was practical, it was affordable, and polished up hard, it said everything about working-class pride without a word being spoken.

Before the dancehalls: a vintage AirWair advert selling Dr Martens as honest workwear.

So what actually is oxblood?

Here's the bit most people get wrong. You couldn't really walk into an English shop in 1969 and buy oxblood boots off the shelf, because barely anyone made them in that colour. The original oxblood boots were made by the skinheads themselves: you bought brown boots, you got hold of a tin of oxblood polish, and you worked it in, coat after coat, until the leather turned that deep purplish-brown with a red glow underneath.³ It wasn't a factory finish; it was hours of graft with a rag and a brush. Every pair came out slightly different, and every pair was properly yours.

The real thing: dark, blooded boots, turn-ups sitting just right, nothing bright about them.

The cherry red question

You'll often hear that cherry red was the classic skinhead colour, and plenty of books repeat it. But dig through the photographs from 1968 to 1971 and the bright cherry boots are strangely hard to find. The boots in the old pictures run dark: brown, black, and that deep blooded shade.³ The likeliest story is that even where a redder boot was worn, it got darkened down fast under layers of polish, because nobody wanted to look like they were wearing something out of a circus. If your cherry reds look bright enough to stop traffic, the old boys would have had the polish out the same evening.

The modern cherry red in all its glory. Photo: @deadbeatd0lly

Buying oxblood today

Modern labels don't make it easy. The big bootmakers use oxblood, cherry red and burgundy almost interchangeably, and two boots with different names on the box can come out of it near enough the same colour. In contrast, the one actually closest to true oxblood might be labelled something else entirely.³ So ignore the name on the box and judge with your eyes: proper oxblood is dark, more brown than red at first glance, with the red only really showing when the light catches a good shine.

If you want to buy well instead, two names worth knowing. Solovair still make their boots in Northamptonshire the traditional way, and their oxblood comes up properly dark rather than fairground red. And if you're anywhere near London, get yourself down to the British Boot Company at 5 Kentish Town Road in Camden. It's been booting skins, punks and everyone in between for decades, and there's no substitute for trying them on with someone behind the counter who actually knows the culture.

The British Boot Company, 5 Kentish Town Road: London's original Doc shop.

Or do it the original way. Buy a decent pair of brown boots, get a tin of oxblood polish, put a record on and put the work in. Fifty-odd years later it's still the most authentic route to the real colour, and there's something right about earning it the way the first skins did.

Wearing them right

Oxblood boots want the rest of the outfit up to standard: Sta-Prest or jeans with a clean turn-up sitting just on top of the boot, braces, and a proper button-down. If you're putting a look together, our traditional skinhead clothing collection is built for exactly that, by people who care about this stuff as much as you do. We're called Oxblood Clothing for a reason.

Sources: 1. The Story of Subculture: The Skinheads, Pride Without Prejudice - Underground England | 2. Skinheads - Museum of Youth Culture | 3. Les Bottes Rouges - Booted & Suited | 4. Photography: @deadbeatd0lly on Instagram