Summer is officially here and I should probably start buying lots of plain cotton shirts because of the heat. I love my workshift as I get to do things before going to the office but summer is always a tricky thing to deal with. Lately, I just bring another collared top with me in the office to change my usually drenched with sweat shirt because that was the minimum requirement of the dress code.
Anyway, I attached the trick keychain on the wexford messenger and they looked lovely together under the afternoon sunlight.
What I love most in having a constant access to my email is the ability to read curious events happening on my blog even on the go. So yesterday, when I’ve heard the familiar “You’ve got mail!” AOL-tone, I was surprised to see this message in my Inbox, for a comment left on the entry “Wednesday footwear finds“:
Of course, I was taken aback. It never occurred to me that I had a fake pair of Red Wing shoes. The anonymous reader did not leave any e-mail address nor URL for me to get in touch with him/her, so there was no way for me to reach out to him/her. All I had was the IP address from a user located in G/F Centrum II Building in Makati, just near my workplace. (hmmm…) Anyway, I looked into this possibility and I would have appreciated more this piece of information, had the user elaborated on the reasons why. Personally, it is extremely easy to call out and pronounce something as inauthentic, especially under the cloak of anonymity in the internet. Maybe the comment was not left out of malice and the reader was really concerned; and in his haste, he had forgotten to indicate any contact information. But I can’t help but think of other reasons as well. =D
He had a point, though. When I first posted about the shoes in November, I just cross-examined it with the website of Red Wing and zeroed in immediately on the 875s. I did not bother scrutinizing the tag beneath the tongue of the boots and realized that these were 8875s and NOT 875s. But what’s the difference anyway? I did not know about nuances in design until last night (and I will not bother claiming that I know everything but at least I backed it up with my own research), and thanks to the reader, I got a better understanding of the Red Wing 8875s.
Screencap from redwingshoe.co.jp (Japanese site) with the 8875 boots
Red Wing 875 versus Red Wing 8875 – notice the difference in the color of the eyelets
A careful Google search brought me to forums discussing the 8875 Red Wing boots and I found out here that:
“Different model use different eyelets. 875, 1907 & 877 are different where u can find engrave of ‘red wing’ on each dark color eyelet which silver eyelet dont. 8131, 8875, 8165, 8134, 8167, 9111, 8173 and 8179 are made with silver eyelet.”
I also found out that the 8875 is a model exclusively produced in Japan and is more reddish than the yellowish 875. I also cannot find 8875 in Red Wing’s website but when I was redirected to their Japanese site www.redwingshoe.co.jp, I found the boots after a simple search. I also had a little difficulty searching for the 8875, but after knowing the Japanese connection, I had more relevant results when using google.co.jp.
Anyway, I’m still open to hear again from this curious reader. And hopefully, the next time he calls me out on something, he would leave some contact information so I can easily get back to him for a better exchange of words.
