These Dazzling Handmade Boots Just Perfected a 100-Year-Old Horween Leather Recipe

Ready for adventure, the new Overlander is the product of an exclusive collaboration between Nicks Boots and Horween Leather Company.

nicks handmade boots spokane leather macro

By Steve Mazzucchi

Published January 28, 2025

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Updated January 28, 2025

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Look, just as people can get a cheeseburger anywhere, anyone can make a “heritage style” boot. But crafting a transcendent boot with decades of actual heritage behind it, that’s something else altogether.

You can procure such elusive footwear from brands like Spokane, Washington’s own Nicks Handmade Boots, which has been at it for more than 60 years.

The heritage runs even deeper when Nicks teams up with Chicago-based Horween Leather Company and improves upon a formula the latter first hit upon way back in the early 1900s.

nicks handmade boots spokane leather beauty — By all indications, the Spokane Leather in these boots will only improve aesthetically over time.

All of this history swirls together brilliantly in the new Overlander boots, featuring the debut of what they are calling Spokane Leather.

From the look of these beauties, they will go strong for decades to come. But there’s more to these boots than appearance. So let’s take a quick trip down memory lane.

The quest for better leather

Founded by Ukrainian immigrant Isadore Horween in 1905, Horween has spent more than a century establishing itself as a premium leather refinery, and as the exclusive supplier of the leather used in NFL footballs, its reputation is pretty secure.

In those early days, one treatment the brand developed, ChromePak, served as a “mechanical leather” used to make oil seals intended. It was well suited for industrial applications due to its heat resistance and durability, which was superior to synthetics of the time and even today.

nicks handmade boots overlander family — The Overlander boots are available in a range of nine different Brown, Black and Honey colorways.

When ChromePak started to break down, however, it would leak and workers would have to shut down the whole pumping system before the seal completely failed.

Enter Nicks Handmade Boots, which, interestingly enough, also has an Eastern European background. The brand was founded in Spokane in 1964 by second-generation shoemaker Nikolai Blahuczyn, aka “the Original Nick.”

The result of this otherworldly alchemy? A unique leather with optimal qualities, including exceptional comfort, durability, water resistance, color depth, soft hand feel and patina, meaning it should look better and better as time goes by.

Blahuczyn hailed from either Russia or Ukraine (accounts differ) and after being drafted into the Soviet Army during World War II, eventually made his way to the United States. Following eight years of working for Otto White of White’s Shoe Co. (now, yes, White’s Boots), Blahuczyn opened Nick’s Shoe Shop.

Fast forward 61 years, and Nicks and Horween have joined forces to develop the aforementioned Spokane Leather, which takes the base tannage of ChromePak and integrates a modern vegetable re-tannage, followed by hot stuffing with a blend of oils and waxes.

nicks handmade boots overlander rocks — On the Overlander product page, you can choose not only the color but also the height, width, toe structure and outsole material you would like.

The result of this otherworldly alchemy? A unique leather with optimal qualities, including exceptional comfort, durability, water resistance, color depth, soft hand feel and patina, meaning it should look better and better as time goes by.

From a usage standpoint, the new Overlander is pretty versatile. Rugged enough for the job site, stylish enough for a casual dinner and, with an optional Vibram outsole, grippy enough for outdoor adventures — where you can write your own heritage, far off the beaten path.