Unboxing a new style with Leah, Dr Martens Kelvin II in Black Polished Smooth Leather is a stunning new brogue shoe!
Author: Gab
Australia Harden Up with Dr Martens Industrial Safety
Sometime in the mid 2000’s we sold our last ever Australian Safety Standard Steel Toe Boot made by Dr Martens. Ever since we have felt a loss of something great, and our hearts have sunk into pits of horror filled sadness as we lamented with the heavy hopelessness of yet another year spent without the real feel of Steel Toe Docs for our Tradies, Safety Supervisors, Boiler Makers, FireFighters, Heavy Machine Operators, Engineers, and all sorts of danger walks!
Four times a year, for oh maybe 10 years, Downes Shoes harassed Dr Martens Australia like the constantly hungry brats that we are, always asking have you got that, can we get this, why can’t we have… Steel Caps that comply with AUS/NZ Safety standards. We didn’t think it was that much to ask for, however maybe such as a horse or first car, there were many other things to consider beyond our scope of knowledge, most likely cost effectiveness, however as an Australian retailer we forgot about that years ago, so pfft!! Back to the BRAT, we want steel cap safety for AUS/NZ and that’s final!!!
Well it seems we screamed, cried, kicked and bitched just loud enough that Dr Martens listened!! WHAAAT DID YOU SAY??? Dr Martens Steel Cap Safety ARE coming to AUSTRALIA and they will comply with AUS/NZ Safety standards!
WHEN??
FROM SEPTEMBER 2017!!!
HOW MUCH??
AFFORDABLE and in line with other steel cap brands!!
Sometimes good things come to those who wait!
NEED MORE INFO?? Click an image for hard core stats!
EDIT March 2020: We have a great range of Steel Toe Docs available all year round! Don’t need a steel toe? Check out the collection of Industry Boots and shoes that have a higher grade non slip sole and padded lining for extra comfort.. All at Downes Shoes!
Dr Martens Made in England at Downes Shoes
Downes Shoes absolutely love all things Dr Martens, so we are very very pleased to be able to offer a range of ‘Made in England’ docs to our customers!
Here is a little history on the range, taken from Dr Martens themselves…
This is where it all began…
The Dr Martens ‘Made in England’ range is created at the Cobbs Lane Factory in Wollaston, England; which has been producing footwear since 1901. It is the home of the original Dr Martens boot and within these factory walls works a specialised team of cutters, clickers and welters schooled in traditional shoe making methods and the unique process that makes Dr Martens like no other shoe on earth.
Here, in amongst the smell of freshly cut leather and the noisy backddrop of carefully preserved machinery, the unmistakable shape of Dr Martens boot begins to form: traveling the length of the factory floor beginning with a small pile of tanned leather hides, the process takes the boot through various highly skilled stages of evolution until its final arrival in the box.
Why made in England?
In 2003, in a last ditch effort to stave off bankruptcy, Dr Martens closed all but one of it’s UK factories. It kept this one small factory open, hoping one day that it could manufacture small runs, one-offs or customised boots and shoes for those prepared to pay the extra cost of making in England.
This one remaining factory was just not any old factory, It was the factory in Wollaston where the very first 1460 boot was made on April 1st 1960. Many of the skilled cobblers who have worked at Wollaston remember the early days of Dr Martens production; the names of the suppliers of leather, components and the origins of the swing tags and boxes.
Above all they remember why Dr Martens was made like no other boot on earth. they knew the care, attention and skill needed in the unique heat sealing process that welds by fire the air cushioned sole to the upper.
In the last few years, this small factory has expanded in size to make 70,000 pairs a year. This is not even 2% of the global Dr Martens output , but, sure enough there are customers all over the world who want to wear a product that is made on the original site. With the expansion come the possibility of recruiting and training more workers, young and old, to keep shoe making skills in general and Dr Martens know how in particular alive in Northamptonshire. It also means that materials and components will be sourced locally if possible.
But, on top of all this, Dr Martens are also able to send its cobblers and technicians from Wollaston to Asia to help train the workers there and to make sure that Dr Martens unique process and quality are replicated everywhere that it’s boots and shoes are made.
Dr Martens 56th Birthday!
To celebrate we are heading to our favourite neighbour, Sabotage Social for a Sunday afternoon of music, drinks and DR MARTENS GIVEAWAYS!
We will also have a sweet stall set up as well as shoe shines and general partying down to tunes care of our very own Leah Lovelaces.
So if you are in the south east Queensland area on Sunday 3rd April and are over the age of 18, come on down as Downes takes over Sabotage!
Find the Facebook event HERE
Downes loves sales!
Downes loves sales! So much so we have a dedicated sale room all year round! And we are always adding to it… here are just some of the styles that have just gone on sale.. some of them are so special you have to come in store to find them!
Back To School Cool with Dr Martens From Downes Shoes
Back To School Cool with Dr Martens From Downes Shoes
Dr Martens History
By Martin Roach
When the Dr. Martens boot first catapulted from a working-class essential to a countercultural icon back in the 1960s, the world was pre-internet, pre-MTV, pre-CD, pre-mp3s, premobile phones… hey, they’d only just invented the teenager. In the years before the boot’s birthday, 1st April, 1960, kids just looked like tribute acts to their parents, younger but the
same. Rebellion was only just on the agenda for some – for most kids of the day, starved of music, fashion, art and choice, it was not even an option.
But then an unlikely union of two kindred spirits in distinctly different countries ignited a phenomenon.
In Munich, Germany, Dr Klaus Maertens had a garage full of inventions, including a shoe sole almost literally made of air; in Northampton, England, the Griggs family had a history
of making quality footwear and their heads were full of ideas. They met, like a classic band audition, through an advert in the classified pages of a magazine. A marriage was born, an
icon conceived of innovation and self-expression. Together they took risks. They jointly created a boot that defined comfort but was practical, hard-wearing and a design
classic. At first, like some viral infection, the so-called 1460 stooped near to the ground, kept a low profile, a quiet revolution. But then something incredible started to happen.
The postmen, factory workers and transport unions who had initially bought the boot by the thousand, were joined by rejects, outcasts and rebels from the fringes of society.
At first, it was the working-classes; before long it was the masses. Skinheads were the first subculture to adopt the boot in the early 1960s, spilling out of the
East End of London, then across Britain and the world; initially non-racist and obsessive about their fashion, by the time the skinhead movement was corrupted with elements of right-wing
extremism, Dr Martens had already morphed into a torchbearer for a brave new world. The late 1960s and 1970s saw the boot adopted by – not thrust upon – nearly all the ‘tribes’:
Mods, glam, punks, ska, psychobillies, grebos, Goths, industrialists, nu-metal, hardcore, straight-edge, grunge, Britpop… Then pop started to eat itself.
The internet spread like an epidemic, reaching fifty million users in eighteen months – a feat that took radio forty years. The first mobile phone text was sent in 1992; within three years,
email was like oxygen. Everything had changed. There were no tribes anymore. At least, “not like they used to make ‘em.” You don’t see one tribe fighting another anymore, a haircut does not define a person to four albums by three bands.
The tribe is down to one person. You. A one-man army.
The personal revolution manifests itself in a million ways. So-called ‘indie’ and ‘punk’ record
labels of the 1970s and 1980s were created to cut out the suits. They were called ‘labels’ because of the round adhesive label smack bang in the middle of the vinyl. Vinyl? CDs? Now, you don’t even need a label. Record, mix, master and post on the web from your own empire. Hit the charts from downloads alone. There is no one left to cut out. It’s all down to you. Of course, just because we can all now ‘create’, doesn’t mean we are all actually any good. But the cream floats to the top, whatever the mode of transport. Same with Dr. Martens. Decades have come and gone, brands have exploded and then imploded, but the 1460 is still there, unique, individual, original. Anti-fashion defined in eight holes. What’s seen as information overload to the older generation is just everyday surfing to the
new generation. In one weekend edition of The New York Times, there is more information than a seventeenth century man was exposed to in his entire life. Dr. Martens haven’t been around since the 1600s, but in terms of ‚’brands’ that mean something, that last, that reinvent and evolve, they pre-date pretty much everything. By the mid-1990s, Dr. Martens had festered in the minds of youth without a single penny of ‘marketing spend’, longer than the majority of global brands had even existed. There is no comparison. This is not a brand, it is a way of thinking, a mode of expression.
The problem with ‘brands’ is that they dictate. They might offer the must-have item of the season, but they design it, shape it, form it and sell it. You have no say, other than handing
over your money. Look at the word: ‘brand’. That’s what they do to cattle. Rebel. Create your own brand. Dr. Martens have always been different. No other brand has been mutated, customised, fucked up and freaked out like DM’s. Without asking or being able to stop it. It happened to them. They were just fascinated bystanders on a journey that has raced through every crevice of subculture, every twist and turn of youthful creativity and now, here, with a generation who have always had email, mp3s and downloads, it is as relevant and vibrant as ever. Because although the tribes no longer stride through London or New York, although individuality is the music for the masses, although fashion is just another way of defining yourself, the Dr. Martens ‘brand’ has come full circle, it is a blank canvas on which a generation can paint their personality. You can wear your grunge shorts, your emo hair, your punk tatts, your metal piercings and your pride on your sleeve, all at the same time, there are no limits, no boundaries, no pigeon-holes to fit into. To be creative sometimes you have to rebel. To rebel you have to have something to rebel against. Driving fast, drinking cheap beer and smashing windows isn’t rebellion. The best form of rebellion is individualism. Thinking for yourself. Information overload is the most fantastic element of modern life. You can have it all. You don’t need to align yourself with one band, one tribe, one venue, one gig; you can share your console with a complete stranger twenty thousand miles away; you can post your demo on a site that has a greater population than most countries. But you need anchors in this sea of creativity. You need things you can rely on. Things you can recruit to your army. Friends, whether they add you or not.
Tunes loaded, down. Ideas loaded, up. Fashions that express. Possessions that matter. Things that inspire self-expression, not commodities that spoon-feed an identity. Dr. Martens anchor you, liberate your creativity, inspire and fuel your identity.
Our heritage fits your future; your future is our future.
Downes Shoes 90 Years Ago
Yard sale this Saturday
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Dr Martens Spirit
Once the genie had been let out of the bottle back in the 1960s, the vapours of Dr. Martens’ rebellious spirit could not be contained and the boot seeped into every corner and crevice of youth culture.
THE FULL STORY
The history of subculture is a chronicle of being different. Back in the 1950s, when the first generation of teenagers fired up a youth revolution, their goal was to look and behave differently to their parents. Previously, young people had been stylistic carbon copies of their elders. But with the advent of first-generation rock ‘n’ roll and also Teddy Boys, a generational schism cracked open that would never again be rendered shut.
On the surface, the Griggs family of Northampton in the English Midlands was seemingly a part of this reviled establishment. Making boots since 1901 in the heartland of British shoe-making, the family was successful, established, respected. Scratch the surface a little, however, and it’s clear that the Griggs clan actually possessed certain characteristics that would in the future become essential identifiers of any self-respecting youth phenomenon: they were free thinkers and they were different.
Why different? Because the Griggs family didn’t accept what had gone before as a rigid template for the future. The past was largely a reference book of ‘old’ ideas to rebel against. It was this spirit of innovation that coursed through Bill Griggs’ veins as he sat in his Cobbs Lane office one day in the late 1950s flicking through an issue of Shoe and Leather News magazine, only for his eyes to fall upon an advert by a German duo looking for overseas partners for their revolutionary new air-cushioned sole.
Munich-based Dr Maertens and his university friend Dr Funck were also different. Inventors, mavericks, free-thinkers, ditto. In response to a foot injury on a ski-ing trip, they’d invented an air-cushioned sole and were looking for like-minded innovators. Griggs contacted Dr Maertens, a name was anglicized, a plan hatched and a legend born on April 1st, 1960.
When the first pair of Dr. Martens boots rolled off the production line on that day, it was on to a British high street where youth tribes were still a rarity. Not for long: the next four decades saw the time-bomb of subculture explode across the globe as a series of tribes sprang up from their respective undergrounds, each new incarnation heralding a burning desire to be different to what had gone before.
In those early years, however, there are two distinctive and pivotal moments when Dr. Martens and youth culture became melded together, inseparably as it turned out. First up was the early skinhead, a multi-cultural, ska-loving homage to the British working classes, mimicking the dress sense of the working man with an obsessive attention to detail – style was everything. Up until then, the Dr. Martens boot had been sold mostly as reliable working men’s footwear; therefore it made the perfect choice for the skinhead. And so Dr. Martens was wrenched from the factory floor into youth culture and, for the brand, nothing would ever be the same again.
A few short and volatile years later, Pete Townshend deliberately donned a pair of black 1460s on stage with his incendiary band The Who, as an unashamed indicator of his affiliation with working class pride. When Townshend windmilled and jumped around in his DM’s, the young world watched. This was in an era of flower power and dandyish psychedelia; Townshend looked … different. Now Dr. Martens had a torch-bearer who was at the very heart of youth culture.
Townshend has said that he used to go to bed on tour with two things: ‘A cognac bottle and a Dr. Martens boot.’ This almost peculiar personal affection for the boot is not exclusive to The Who’s guitarist. It is in fact at the very core of the brand’s enduring popularity and it also ensured that over the coming decades, when each subsequent youth subculture feverishly burned the trappings of the previous ‘fashion’ or ‘movement’, they frequently saved their cherished Dr. Martens from the flames, clutching them to their collective chest. So when punks came along, angry at a lack of opportunity and defiantly individualistic, they pulled DM’s on for the battle; when Two Tone fans spent hours choosing just the right suit, a crisp and clean pair of three-hole 1461 shoes was an essential accompaniment; and when Britpop kids might have kicked against grunge’s apparent apathy, a pair of cherry red 8-holers was often the perfect companion.
Once the genie had been let out of the bottle back in the 1960s, the vapours of Dr. Martens’ rebellious spirit could not be contained and the boot seeped into every corner and crevice of youth culture. Consequently, the subcultures who have championed Dr. Martens reads like a Who’s Who’ of youth culture: skins, punks, two tone, Oi!, hardcore, psychobilly, goth, industrial, grebo, grunge, Britpop, emo … the list goes on.
Of course, Dr. Martens has not been immune to the brash self-expression of youth: so the boots are often worn with the quarters flapping open, deliberately unpolished and scuffed; or perhaps laced rigidly and precisely, with a military sheen on the toe. Maybe left plain or else customised individually … and so on. Each to their own. Each pair different. This is where that moment of magic back in late 1950s Northampton truly comes into its own – what the Griggs family created was a watershed silhouette, an off-the-shelf design classic that has quite literally allowed generation after generation to paint its own personality on to those humble uppers, sometimes literally.
With the explosion of technology in the 1990s and into the new Millennium, youth culture changed exponentially. It’s fair to say that the so-called ‘tribes’ are not so visible anymore, often populating the ether of the internet rather than the streets of the underground. Youth culture in the 21st century is a very much more complex entity, more fluid and certainly more intermingled. Some people claim ‘there are no haircuts anymore’ and in a sense that is true. But there is certainly no lack of invention, rebellion and individuality, perhaps now more than ever.
This post-modern generation is far more media-savvie than their predecessors too. They dip into a stylistic ‘Pick ‘n’ Mix’ of fashion and subcultural history to create a look, sound and lifestyle that appeals. Nothing is off limits. Inevitably, some classic looks become misappropriated and demeaned, that’s unavoidable and unpreventable. Increasingly, the brands that survive this potentially fatal mass dissemination are those that are genuine. Marketing cheque books can buy screen time or magazine space, but not authenticity. When I first met the current Dr. Martens chairman several years ago, he turned up in a scooter boy’s green parka, driving a Mini with a Union Jack on the roof and wing mirrors. Different, I thought.
The inventors of the Dr. Martens air-cushioned sole; the Griggs family; every youth subculture that has ever existed – they all have one common denominator, a primal urge to be different. Modern youth culture is now unrecognisable from the 1950s – in some ways from the 1990s even – and yet the next chapters of the history books will be written by exactly the same kind of personalities who penned the memoirs of the first fifty years of subculture. Namely people who want to be individuals, who want to be expressive, rebellious, free-thinking … different. That word again.
And when they learn from the footsteps of their predecessors and step into a future of their own making, they might just do it in a pair of Dr. Martens …
