Rick Owens Army Low Boot

The lacing is set on an angle. That single decision is what separates this from every other substantial lace-up boot, and it is the same instinct that puts the zip off centre on the leather jackets: take the symmetrical thing everyone expects, move its closure off the axis, and the object stops reading as a boot with details and starts reading as a shape. Look at it straight on and the laces run as a diagonal across the front rather than as a ladder up the middle.

The side release is the concession to reality, and it is the reason this is wearable rather than admirable. A boot with this much substance to it would otherwise be a five-minute proposition at both ends of the day. With the release it is a boot you can actually put on, which is not something the category is famous for.

What you get in exchange for the weight is presence. This is footwear with mass, and it changes the proportion of everything worn above it. A wide trouser breaks over it correctly. A slim one is made deliberately slimmer by contrast. Either is a decision rather than an accident, and the boot is doing the work.

Why we selected it

We wanted a piece of Owens footwear that a customer could wear in Santa Fe in February without thinking about it, and this is the one. A good deal of what we love in this house is warm-weather footwear or occasion footwear. This is neither. It is the boot that handles a cold morning, an unpaved lot, and a gallery opening in the same day, which is a genuinely Santa Fe requirement and one that most footwear of this ambition ignores entirely.

Owens’s footwear is where his proportions are most exaggerated and most immediately legible, and the Army Low is the version cut back to something you can wear every day.

Materials and construction

One hundred percent leather. Made in Italy, in Black. Angled lace closure with a side release entry.

Fit notes

A boot with this much structure sits differently from a soft one and is worth trying on with the sock you intend to wear. Substantial footwear generally runs closer than it looks, and the angled lacing means the adjustment across the instep is not where your hand expects it to be. We would rather you came in, and failing that, called us, than guessed at a size on a boot this substantial.

Styling

Under a wide trouser, where the hem breaks over the boot and only the toe shows, is the way the house cuts for. Under cropped tailoring it is the opposite argument and just as good, because the boot is then the whole statement and the trouser is the frame. With denim it is simply a very good boot.

Care

Leather footwear is brushed rather than washed. Keep it out of standing water where you can, let it dry naturally and well away from direct heat if it does get wet, because heat is what turns a soaked hide hard, and hold the shape with trees or paper while it dries. We do not prescribe a conditioning interval; how often a boot wants attention depends entirely on what it has been walked through, and over-treating a hide does as much harm as neglecting it. Our care guidance covers leather in detail.

Related pieces

In the same footwear register, the Geobasket Sneakers and the F/W 25 Minimal Sneak, and for the warm-weather end of the same line, the Ballast Mule. Everything we currently hold from Rick Owens is listed together.