8 Myths About Shell Cordovan: Does It Crease? Is It Even Leather?

Do I really need a deer bone to smooth out the rolls? Does it really just shine itself? Is it even leather?

These are just a few of the strange questions you’ll encounter when you’re just getting into Shell Cordovan, the mythical superleather used by only the most discerning and highest rolling of shoe guys.

These questions have been bugging me of late, as I just received my first pair of Cordovan boots from the Indonesian brand Midas, and I’m at a loss as to what rules I’m supposed to follow with them. This is even after went to Horween’s tannery in Chicago to see how they make cordovan!

So I reached out to cordovan superfan David, host of the Shellvedge YouTube channel, to put some myths to rest.

Why Trust Us? We Find the Experts

I’ve devoted over six years to learning about and sharing information about boots and other casual, durable, and timeless menswear. And brother, I’ve gone the extra mile traveling the world to meet bootmakers, footwear designers, tanners, and other experts to learn everything I can about longlasting footwear. I even handmade a pair of boots in Guatemala. I’m not an expert, but I’m knowledgeable.

Knowledgeable enough to know when to find an expert to answer my questions, and when it comes to the niche world of Shell Cordovan, that’s David. He’s got a ton of Cordovan and knows how to take care of it. He’s spent years producing dozens of videos about Shell on his YouTube channel and even managed to resurrect the kangaroo boots that a qualified cobbler told me were stained beyond repair.

I also interviewed Skip Horween from Horween Leather Company, the tannery that produces what’s pretty widely considered America’s finest Cordovan. Our goal is to compile the best information out there, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job.

Myth 1: Cordovan is Bad in Wet Weather

• Chrome tanned leather tends to be more water resistant than vegetable tanned leather like cordovan.
• Cordovan might get water spots from rain, but they’ll come out.

“My personal opinion is that it’s no worse than any other one-hundred-percent veg-tanned leather,” says David. “If you happen to be in a rain shower, there’s nothing that’s going to damage the shell cordovan permanently.”

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I’ve experienced the dismay that comes with getting water stains (or salt stains) on nice leather, and there’s a sad truth that the rarer vegetable tanned leather — almost all leather is chrome tanned, a more recent invention — has a reputation for being tougher while also being less water resistant.

“You could get rain spots on it,” he admits. “But that’s usually from the water sitting on some old conditioning product on the shoe’s surface rather than the cordovan itself staining. A good way to cure that is to just give it a gentle cleaning and vigorous brushing.”

One of my favorite pair of veg tanned kangaroo leather boots were nearly ruined by salt stains. Fortunately, David himself fixed them for me. You can check out his process in the video above.

Myth 2: Cordovan is the Best Dress Shoe Leather

• Its high shine and high price lead many to consider Shell as the ultimate dressy leather.
• But it’s also very robust and almost dramatic; calfskin is typically considered a more formal leather.

A lot of people think it’s the highest-grade dress shoe leather you can get, but is it?

“I’d say it’s not the best dress shoe leather.” David explained. “I think people see the high shine and the high price tag that comes with shell Cordovan as ‘dressy.’ There’s a certain amount of subjectivity here but in my opinion, a very fine calfskin is really the epitome of a dress shoe. I prize cordovan more for its versatility than its formality.”

Fun fact: Cordovan was originally used for leather strips called stops used to keep razors sharp and when it started as shoe leather, it was more commonly found on work boots because it’s so strong.

Wait, Why Is Shell Cordovan So Expensive?

Cordovan is an expensive leather. Why?

“It takes six to nine months to make Cordovan from start to finish,” Skip Horween, the President of Horween Leather Company, told me when I visited their tannery.

The price also comes from how hard it is to source: it comes from horses (much rarer than cows when it comes to how many hides are available) and it can only be made from a small area at the base of a horse’s tail. You’re lucky to get two pairs of shoe’s worth out of an entire horse.

While it works perfectly well for dress shoes, so do other leathers with tight grain and high shine, like box calf.

Myth 3: Cordovan is Self-Shining

• Cordovan is self-polishing rather than self-shining.
• It develops a smooth shine from friction and heat without any need to apply product.

If you’ve heard one “fact” about Cordovan that seemed too good to be true it’s that it has the ability to shine itself. Just by walking around, your shoes will keep this high-shine polished look.

Or will they?

“I would say it’s self-polishing, not self-shining,” says David. “Polishing is buffing and raising the luster of the leather itself with agitation, like vigorous brushing. Whereas when I think of a shine, it’s something that you are building on top of the leather, like a high shine wax that you’d buff.”

It polishes itself because there are so many oils, fats, waxes, and dyes in the material that when it encounters friction from regular use, these substances move around within the leather and create a shiny look to the leather.

Myth 4: Cordovan Doesn’t Stretch with Wear

• As a vegetable tanned leather, cordovan is less stretchy than more common leathers.
• However, it will slowly conform to the foot with wear.

Cordovan is a famously strong and solid material that’s extremely dense due to the tightly packed fibers of the horse’s butt.

Partly because of that density and partly because it’s vegetable tanned, it has a reputation for not stretching or conforming to the shape of your foot with wear. This reputation is reinforced by shoemakers who I regularly hear complain that cordovan can easily “tear like rice paper” during the lasting process.

“Yeah. I would completely disagree with that,” David says. “If it didn’t stretch, they wouldn’t be able to shape the leather over the last to make the shoe. And cordovan develops rolls as you wear it — but the length isn’t shortening. You get the rolls from the leather stretching and folding on itself.”

Myth 5: Cordovan isn’t Even Leather

• Because it’s made from a membrane and not skin, some argue that Cordovan doesn’t count as leather.
• The other side argues that since it’s an animal product that’s been tanned, it is leather.
• There’s no resolving this one.

We have an entire article on whether cordovan is leather, and (of course) it depends on how you define leather. You might think that’s a simple question, but it gets complicated by the fact that cordovan isn’t usually made from skin, it’s made from a membrane under the skin.

“If you are asking my opinion, it’s definitely a leather because it’s an animal product that’s going through a tanning process,” says David, who notes that Horween’s cordovan nonetheless has skin attached to it. “Some dictionaries will say leather is skin, others will say animal product, both will say it’s tanned.”

He followed up with another stumper: is suede leather? Because suede is the underside of the skin, not skin. I… didn’t know.

Myth 6: You Need a Deer Bone to Care for Cordovan Shoes

• A deer bone is not absolutely necessary for cordovan care.
• It’s used to smooth out folds during care and conditioning, but you can use other objects of a similar shape.

The first cordovan collector I met was so pumped about his deer bone, describing with passion how cathartic it was to smooth out the cordovan’s rolls, remove small dents, and bring back its shine after a day of walking around the city.

You’ll often hear folks say that a bone is ideal because it’s got some animal oils in it, but David doesn’t think so.

“I would say it’s not a clear cut case that you absolutely have to have a deer bone,” he says. “If you want to become more adept at caring for scuffs and scratches to the point of a cordovan care enthusiast, a deer bone would allow you to do that. But I prefer to use ebony wood for that purpose.”

But David is a self confessed enthusiast in this space and he made it clear that the average person doesn’t need a bone or a sleeking stick, you can just do regular brushing and conditioning now and then.

Myth 7: Cordovan is the Strongest Leather

• Cordovan is tough, but a little brittle; its tensile strength is lower than calfskin.

Cordovan is vegetable tanned, it’s super dense, it can take a year to make, it’s made from a horse’s butt, all of these make you think tough. And it is a very robust material.

But it’s a little brittle in that it doesn’t have a lot of give, so its tensile strength isn’t as high as a lot of other leathers like calfskin.

“The robustness of the tannage makes it a very resilient leather,” says David. “But it’s not the strongest, simply because it has a very low tensile strength.”

Myth 8: Cordovan Doesn’t Crease

• Cordovan develops rolls rather than creases.
• Some cordovan shoes may show creasing, but you’re seeing creases in the top layer applied by the tannery.

OK, this might be pedantry, but listen: a lot of guys will hear cordovan doesn’t crease and then be shocked when the shoes develop rolls, thinking they’re creases. Cordovan doesn’t fold enough to crease, it’ll get gentle ripples like this.

Why doesn’t it crease? Because there’s no grain structure in Shell. It’s not skin!

But some guys might find lines on their cordovan that look like creases.

“That’s really just the top layer that the tannery applied creasing rather than the shell itself,” says David. “Some tanneries apply a layer of finishing to the Shell and that can create a creasing effect. It’s not the underlying shell that is creasing.”

Wrapping up

I hope this clarifies some things about Shell Cordovan for you. It may not be the strongest leather or be quite as magical as you thought, but it’s still completely unique and, dare I say, marvelous. It’s worth marveling at! Just be careful to not get too obsessed with this stuff, or you might find yourself with 75 pairs of boots and counting.