Off Trail Days

There is a particular kind of day this shoe was built for.

You leave the city early. The traffic thins out somewhere past the second exit and the road starts to climb. By the time you park, the air has changed. You walk until the trail runs out, then keep going anyway.

And then on Monday you wear the same pair to get a flat white.

That is the whole idea behind Off Trail Days. It is the whole idea behind the Alpine Hiker.

Switzerland

We took the Alpine Hiker to the Swiss Alps because that is where a shoe like this either holds up or it does not.

Glacial lakes with that impossible green that never photographs the way it looks. Pine forest so dense the light comes through in slices. Old timber chalets with carved eaves, standing through worse weather than anything we brought with us.

Nothing was staged. The ground was wet, the rock was loose in places, and the shoes came back with the outsoles packed with dirt. That was the point.

The most technical shoe we have made

Paper Straight started with derbies and loafers. Clean lines, city shoes, built for pavement. The Alpine Hiker is a different exercise. It is the first pair we have made where the construction had to answer to the terrain first and the silhouette second.

That is a harder brief than it sounds. Most shoes that survive rough ground look like they belong nowhere else. Most shoes that look good in a city cannot handle a wet slab of granite. The work was in refusing to choose.

The upper

The Alpine Hiker uses a mixed upper, panelled so that each material sits where it does the most work. Suede across the quarters, where the shoe needs to give. Textured leather across the areas that take the most abrasion. The panelling is what gives the silhouette its structure, and it is why the shoe holds its shape after a season of wear instead of collapsing at the ankle.

A rubber toe cap wraps the front. Metal eyelets throughout. The lace hardware is deliberately overbuilt, because the failure point on most hiking silhouettes is not the leather. It is the eyelet.

Inside

Full cowhide leather lining. No synthetic, no mesh.

The sockliner is water-dyed cowhide. Water dyeing takes longer and costs more than pigment finishing, and it means the leather takes colour without a surface coating sitting on top of it. What you get is a footbed that breathes properly, and that darkens with wear instead of cracking.

The outsole

Vibram.

The lug pattern is built for mixed ground. Deep, widely spaced blocks that clear mud rather than pack it, with a flatter contact zone under the ball of the foot so the shoe still walks properly on a flat surface. That combination is the difference between a shoe that grips on a wet trail and one that feels like a brick on a pavement.

Specifications

Three colorways

Brown is the version that reads outdoors. Warm suede against the dark outsole, gold-toned eyelets, tonal laces. It does what good brown footwear always does, which is disappear into everything you already own in earth tones.

Black is the version that reads city. Textured leather, off-white laces for contrast, the whole thing more graphic. Worn under wide black trousers it stops looking like a hiking shoe entirely.

Neither is a seasonal colour. Both will still make sense in April.

Black Ostrich is the third. Genuine ostrich leather, quill-textured and tonal, on the same construction. Quill pattern and density vary from pair to pair. That is a characteristic of the hide, not a defect.

Wearing them

The silhouette is substantial, so the shoe wants a trouser with volume. Wide leg, straight leg, anything with a bit of stack at the hem. A cropped or tapered trouser fights it.

White ribbed socks with the Brown. Whatever you like with the Black.

Beyond that, the honest answer is that we designed this pair so you would not have to think about it. It works with the outfit you were going to wear anyway.

Available 16.09

The Alpine Hiker is available in Brown, Black and Black Ostrich from 16.09.

Photographed in Switzerland, July 2026.