Sorel Winter Boots
Sorel 1964 Premium T Canvas Boot available at Zappos and Sorel. Women’s available here at Sorel.
UPDATE 12/18/12: After several readers alerted me to this mistake, I confirmed with Sorel that the 1964 Premium T Canvas boot does contain leather at the tongue and heel. I was misinformed by the first customer rep and I thought he was pretty clear on it. But thank you everyone who is keeping a watchful eye on us and keeping us honest!
Winter is here! Er, well, has been here, officially. But the weather has been so mild, an effect of in an unseasonably warm and unpredictable season thus far in the New York City area. Thanks to a notorious tropical storm, things we take for granted, like seasons, seem to be a thing of the past. Thanks a lot, global warming. Oh wait, this is our fault. Ugh. But because the weather has been so jumpy lately we need to be prepared for the worst, and you never know when it could get cold and snowy.
Enter Sorel. This Canadian company has been keeping feet warm and dry since 1962. Initially I wanted to feature exclusively the Sorel 1964 Premium T Canvas Boot, pictured above. But unfortunately it is NOT 100% VEGAN. It is, however, almost. I got on the phone with a very helpful customer service rep to check on this, and he confirmed that while the boot contains no leather, it does contain some sort of animal by-product in the glue. Gah. So, for those of you out there who do not draw that hard line, you might want to consider this as an option.
But for those of you who demand purity, there are a few other offerings in Sorel’s line. Pictured below, they are more for serious winter conditions or winter activities. You only really need these joints if you’re going snow shoeing up a mountain or if you live near Mt. Rainier (or if you just need plain old rubber rain boots). Now I’m making the disclaimer right now that these are not the slickest or fashion-forward boots you’re ever going to find. This is function over form. So I don’t want a whole slew of comments like “these are the most goddamn awful boots I have ever seen blah blah blah blah.” Plus you don’t need to look your best when your digging your car out of a foot of snow. And even if you don’t like these, there are some cute boots for your kids! Then again, if you have some good waterproof vegan winter boots, please enlighten us.
MEN’S
Intrepid Explorer 100, available at Zappos and Sorel
Alpha Trac Buckle Boot available at Zappos and and Sorel
WOMEN’S
Sorellington Plus available at 6PM
Alpha Pac available at Zappos and Sorel (also available in men’s)
Cumberland available at Zappos and Sorel
KIDS
Flurry TP Boot Youth (Also available in toddler) at Zappos and Sorel
Snow Commander Youth (also available in infant/toddler, at Zappos and Sorel
16. December 2012 at 13:24
Sorel 1964 Premium T Canvas Boot does contain leather unfortunatelly – the tongue plus a strap on the heel.
16. December 2012 at 20:34
You sure? I spoke to someone at the company and they said there’s no leather. Did you get that info directly from Sorel?
16. December 2012 at 22:30
To the best of my knowledge, these boots are not vegan. I ordered the Sorel 1964 Premium CVS last winter from Zappos.com because it had no animal materials listed on the product page. When I received them, I found the strip at the back of the boot and tab are made of leather, as well as the tongue area at the front. Either the Zappos CSR you spoke with was wrong or they’ve completely redesigned the boot since last year.
If you look at these boots closely on the Zappos site, you can see that these areas still appear to be made of leather. The person you spoke with likely only had what info was listed on their data-base, much like what is on the website and did not examine the boots in person.
When I returned the boots, which isn’t easy for me, as I live in Canada so this involved 2 trips to the US to pickup and return, I left them feedback about better labelling all materials on their products. I never heard back from anyone at Zappos and later I saw this Ecouture article where it is unclear whether the product is vegan or not (but someone clarified in the comments). http://www.ecouterre.com/7-eco-friendly-and-mostly-vegan-winter-boots-to-conquer-snow-slush/sorel-premium-1964-canvas-boot/?extend=1
I am increasingly impressed by Planetshoes.com that has vegan labeled right below each product that is vegan, as well as on the box.
17. December 2012 at 00:25
Henry, yes I am pretty sure, I’ve checked them in a store.
Valerie, thanks for Planetshoes.com!
Here are all vegan-labled shoes at Zappos – http://www.zappos.com/vegan
18. December 2012 at 10:26
Hi guys, thanks for the thoughtful comments. I too was doubtful about the leather looking materials but the CSR I was on the phone with checked with a manager and he seemed pretty clear that there was no leather, but there were some animal products in the outsole… I could be wrong about that. Maybe he did say that there were some animal products generally. Looks like you guys actually saw this so I will defer to you guys based on your first hand experience. But I will double check with the company just to make sure. Thanks guys.
18. December 2012 at 11:00
Yeah you guys were right. I just spoke to another person at Sorel, who confirmed that there is leather on the upper. Sorry about the misinformation. I will update the post and hope to bring you guys some better stuff soon.
19. December 2012 at 10:24
I think these might be vegan from sorel, they only are available in the US but you can ship it from another site!
There is no leather as I can see, would just depend on glues and things, the inside in recycled felt.
http://www.sorel.com/Men%E2%80%99s-Woodbine%E2%84%A2-High-Canvas-Boot/NM1636,default,pd.html