Brilliantly Designed with Minor Execution Issues

There's no need to wax poetic about Lars' (or Ostmo's) design prowess - if you're enough of a sociopath to be on this platform, you already know. And if you've handled these boots (hell, even if you've only seen them in photos), the design speaks for itself. From the last to the pattern: everything is streamlined into a beautiful final product. The IB team nailed the execution in a lot of ways. The stitching throughout, especially on the stitchdown to the sole, is about as flawless as you could ask for. The clicking (save the tongue - I'll explain why below) and the hand-applied patina finish were handled with a level of detail I haven't seen on some boots costing twice as much as these. That said, there are a couple of misses. The eyelets, while beautiful aesthetically, were installed in a way that mushroomed the metal on the backside of the facing - leaving sharp edges that shredded through a few pairs of laces and forced me to have the issue repaired by a local cobbler. On top of that, the right boot suffers from pretty significant tongue slide, which causes some comfort issues after longer days of wear. I can't say for sure, but it may be tied to the noticeable difference in tongue leather thickness between the right and left boots. Either way, it's a clear miss.

I got engaged in these boots so they'll always be sentimental favorites of mine. They're built like handsome tanks, and they've handled the "rigors" of daily office wear plus a few transcontinental trips (with 10-plus miles of walking a day) without breaking a sweat at all. I'm on the lighter side when it comes to how hard I wear my boots, but even so, I can't imagine these lasting me anything less than a lifetime. They're wildly overbuilt for what I put them through. Despite their issues (and from what I've heard, the hardware problem has been corrected on newer IB x Ostmo models) these were well worth the price I paid. Maybe the best compliment I can give them is this: I hope one of my kids ends up a 10.5D so I can hand them down.