This is my first pair of heritage style boots and I'm giving them 3 stars, I would give them 3 and a half stars if possible but I don't think I could give them 4 stars due to an error that I'll go into later. I'm pretty happy with these boots, I gave blkbrd my measurements and a bunch of different requirements which ended up making this pair very custom built. They fit like a glove and truly feel made to order, however, clicking could be better as there were some marks that look like they were from the animal getting scratched or something which I think is cool personally but others might think it's poor clicking, there was one mark on the heel that looked to be from a knife but it's very small and as the waxy commander patinas that'll be less visible so I'm not bothered by it. Stitching was excellent, I've seen others say it's poor or inconsistent but on my pair it was uniform and tidy. The Rudiger has a very English toe box which gives me a bit of toe squish till the leather warms up so if you have wider fit just be wary of it. Speaking of foot size I have very narrow, low volume feet and skinny ankles. Blkbrd accommodated my fit as well as could be expected, I still have to cinch the lace closure till it's touching right at the top for my ankles, but I don't know that much could be done about that without in person measuring done by the craftsmen themselves and they still fit pretty great. I got mine fully leather lined with leather toe stiffener and heel counter, and wow these are pretty stiff boots. I'm still breaking them in and made the mistake early on of wearing them all day on my feet and got a large blister on one heel but if I had taken it slower I would have had no issues with break in. Now on to the only true negative and the reason I'm giving them 3 stars. I asked for a ridgeway sole early on in our email chain as I wanted to evoke the English country boot with my custom pair, and before they went into production blkbrd double checked all the customisations that I had requested and in their list was the ridgeway sole. Now when the boots had been finished they sent me photos to check before sending them off, when I looked at these photos I saw that they had put a standard studded outsole on instead of the ridgeway, so I emailed them back saying that the sole was wrong. I then got an email from UPS saying my order was being processed for delivery, so I sent another email querying them about this. I then received a very apologetic email about the issue and we discussed how to resolve this. In the end blkbrd will give me a free resoling once I wear through these as well as a discount on my next pair. Is it annoying that I have to send my boots to India to get them resoled? Yeah. Am I happy with the boots I got even with these issues? Ultimately, yeah I am. Will I buy another pair from blkbrd? Yeah I think so. For an Australian, I think the price is right at the moment. Shipping prices are reasonable and shipping times were very quick, taking about 5-6 working days to get here. Final notes, I've seen a lot of complaints about customer service and ghosting on Reddit. For my experience, they were communicative through out the process and I only had the issue where they shipped the boots before checking if I had given them the all clear. They also use chat gpt or some other ai when communicating, I'm okay with that as it makes it easier for them to communicate with a global market but it does make it feel a little like you're talking to a robot at times. Would I recommend blkbrd to others? Yeah I would, overall for an online direct to consumer experience the prices are still to this day the best deal out there and you are getting a great product especially if you go MTO. The time from first communication to receiving the boots was a little over 6 weeks which is great for a pair that's customised to my preferences.
