Finally, a Blundstone Boot for Horse Boys
Stop us if you’ve heard this one: An Aussie shoemaker, an Amsterdam skate brand, and some cows in need of a haircut walk into a barn. What comes out?
Three fairly furry Chelsea boots fit, as dreamt up by Blundstone and Pop Trading Company. Of course, Blundstone releasing boots is akin to saying water is wet. The Aussie shoemaker has churned out durable, elastic-sided Chelseas for decades (making it an office favorite here at Highsnobiety).
The surprise here isn’t the shape but that the heritage brand let its proverbial hair down — with a Dutch skatewear label, no less!
We’ve seen the rare collab from Blundstone with COMME des GARÇONS, but that was more subtle fare. This Pop Trading partnership is genuinely fun, like, “seeing your uber-serious office mate crack a joke after years of stony silence” kind of fun.
All it took was returning the Chelsea boot’s traditional leather upper to its literal origin point: Each of the three styles adds unique hair-on cowhide detailing (putting the cow in cowboy, if you will) to create a shoe that feels slightly centaur and slightly Horse Boy, admittedly by way of bovines.
Chalk it up to another big win for the small Dutch brand. For over a decade, Pop Trading’s balance of upscale menswear (in the vein of NOAH or Aimé Leon Dore) and a youthful rogueishness inherent in skate culture has set it apart from its peers.
More than just a hoodie and graphic t-shirt brand, Pop Trading Company was the first skate label to set up a showroom at Paris Fashion Week in 2016 and has produced technically sophisticated outwear and tailored trousers — putting it on the radar of major fashion labels. It transferred Burberry plaid onto breezy button-ups and bucket hats in 2022 and a year later, notched collaborations with adidas, Paul Smith, and Dickies.
With the debut release of these very hairy Blunds, Pop Trading Company has shown that it doesn’t just know its way around a skatepark — it can bring some new tricks to the pasture, too.
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