If I could choose the material for my shoe upper, it would be wool/felt for any parts that don't require high strength. Wool has so many great properties. It both insulates and ventilates. It dries fast. It's lightweight. it's biodegradable. It occurs naturally in colors that are appropriate for business footwear (alpaca particularly has a wide range of hues). The only aspect where it lacks is in strength, however, as we see with huaraches, only a minimal amount of reinforcement is actually necessary for keeping a sole underfoot. I would like shoes that employ wool/felt for much of the shoe upper. Like if Stem or Softstar swapped their current upper materials with wool felt.
Shoes with wool uppers could be the great.
- Thread starter Nyah
- Start date
It's also antimicrobial, so it doesn't smell like everything died when it gets all sweaty...That said, I'm not sure that I'd wear the same shoe at work that I run in (at least on the same day)
I've switched most of my socks over to wool. As an outdoorsman I often wore heavy wool socks while hunting or hiking, etc, but these newer merino wool socks can be as thin as regular socks and no need for liners they are just fine as is. They even make super thin liner weight wool socks, and the Injinji toe sock 'Outdoor' series is a wool blend, and I have both the original weight and liner weight ones. Been meaning to get some wool T shirts too. I've got some of the Ice Breaker wool long sleeve shirts, but they have thinner short sleeved ones too.
