Motor Engineer Boots

I wanted something unique and recently discovered that Japanese lasts tend to fit my foot better than American lasts. I have been a big fan of the MOTO(R) brand and also wanted to take a dive down the rabbit hole of engineer boots. When these limited run, hand-painted, calf skin collectors items came up in my search, virtually untouched, I could not resist the opportunity to start a very special journey. Coinciding with this purchase was the birth of my first kid, a baby girl. It felt right to see the two grow together.

Jake of Almostvintagestyle did an in-depth review of the 1004 Motor dress engineer boots and I used that as a baseline to guess at my best fit. I caught and released a size 9 in their original 1001 CXL model and felt that there was way too much room so I sized down to the 8.5. I believe they had also narrowed the last slightly after the 1001 model so that's helped to snug up the fit.

I first visited the MOTO store in Aoyama to try on their current offerings but didn't find much in my size due to it being the end of their spring season stock. I contributed keeping and eye out for restocks and eventually found this new-old stock pair from a collector online. I used a proxy buying service to help buy and ship the boots from Japan to the US. Through the proxy service there are no refunds or returns so I made sure to do as much research as possible on old Motostyle blogs and emailing their team.