Russell Moccasin Oneida Review: How This Design Crushed the Modern Slipper | Fashion’s Digest

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The Ultimate Tale of Two Moccasins: Best vs. “Not Very Well-Made”

The L.L. Bean slipper is not a very well-made moccasin, but the Russell Oneida is the best-made moccasin on Earth. There is nothing better than it quality-wise, durability-wise, anything like that.

Let’s get to the Russell Moccasin Oneida review!

The Wild World War I Connection You Never Knew About

107 years ago, during World War I, the US military purchased the Russell Oneida moccasins. These moccasins were the only footwear that could build machines that quote ‘scared the living daylights out of civilians.’ The most famous builders of these machines, though, were the Germans.

Their goal with them was to terrify the British, bring panic to their cities, and ultimately lead the British government to collapse. These German bombing runs were called the Zeppelin raids. You’ve seen a Zeppelin before, and these beautiful moccasins built US airships.

The Russell moccasin Oneida is no ordinary moccasin, and it was chosen by the US military because of this wet-last molded outsole. It’s incredibly durable but also silky soft, so people who were building airships could walk on the airship skin without puncturing and tearing the fabric, which was cotton and impregnated with rubber.

Nowadays, though, the Oneida is worn by Harrison Ford, and Russell moccasins are worn by US presidents, royalties, kings, queens, whoever, and of course, the mighty Tom Selleck.

Let’s Talk About L.L. Bean (And Why I’m Not Trying to be Mean)

Oh, and then there is the L.L. Bean double-slipper soul sucker. I don’t know if you’ve seen that meme where it shows this terrifying, scary, undomesticated giant wolf, and then it says like hey, 30,000 years later, it’s this little goofy dog wearing a birthday hat? That’s exactly what we’re talking about today.

Little disclaimer because I don’t like being mean – I am obsessed with where I grew up: New England, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I love Maine, and I go there all the time. I just hiked Tumbledown Mountain in Weld, Maine. L.L. Bean is in my blood.

That being said, three things about L.L. Bean: number one is L.L. Bean officially is the world record title holder for the worst product photo I have ever seen of a boot on the internet. It’s weird that they only took one picture of that boot for the website, too, because it’s a very beautiful boot in real life.

Number two, I do, to a degree, understand why they have to make this moccasin like they do, and it looks nice, but no offense to L.L. Bean. It’s not very nice.

And number three, I hiked Tumbledown Mountain in my Russell moccasin back countries because Russell moccasin is my favorite boot brand of all time and has been for 2 years, but I did want to make it very clear that this article is not sponsored by Russell moccasin.

I reached out to them for the first time ever, like last year. I reached out to them again to do this article. All I asked them was that they give me a free pair of Oneidas that I could talk about, and they make a pair of boots for my dad.

Quick Comparison: Russell Moccasin Oneida vs. L.L. Bean Moccasin

The Native American Origins of Moccasins – It’s More Than Just a Word

Now, you can’t talk about moccasins without talking about Native American culture and heritage because that is essentially why I’m holding these today.

But moccasin, the word, is an Algonquin word, and the Algonquin tribes are a group of tribes, I think, along the east coast of North America into Canada, but specifically, moccasin is from the Powhatan language, which was a tribe based in Virginia, and it just means indigenous people’s footwear.

So I think when John Smith, who was with Jamestown, said, ‘What do you call these leather shoes that you put on your feet?’ they said, ‘Well, those are just generally a moccasin,’ to which John Smith said ‘Oh they’re all moccasins,’ and all the European settlers cheered and then they all put them on their feet because these are specifically built for where you live.

Depending on where you lived in North America, your moccasins were different. If you lived in New England, which is, you know, covered in trash and very woodsy and soft for the most part, you probably had soft-soled moccasins, but if you live somewhere that was very rocky, very flat, rough, you had hard-soled moccasins which were typically made out of rawhide.

How L.L. Bean Changed the Moccasin Game Forever

Now, I want to talk about L.L. Bean first because even though Russell Moccasin is an older company, they did it first. They do it better. L.L. Bean is the de facto moccasin maker in the US. Everybody knows L.L. Bean for their moccasins, for their slippers, and for their bean boots, which was a play on moccasins.

They effectively changed the design of their moccasins so much that they had to change the name of the product, or you would get mad and frustrated with it.

The very essence of moccasin construction from way back when is, by definition, KISS – keep it simple, stupid. It’s essentially a piece of leather wrapped from the bottom of your foot up and then sewn at the top.

The way that Russell does it and the way that L.L. Bean does it is totally different. Russell’s way closer to the original. L.L. Bean, I feel like they’re trying to disguise what you interpret to be comfortable, and that’s my main problem with these.

In 1926, L.L. Bean released their heavy-duty double-soled moccasin. 7 to 10 years later, depending on who you ask, L.L. Bean breaks the moccasin forever and makes something that everybody likes.

It’s universally a fantastic idea, and all of a sudden, their moccasin was outdated because of cars, cities, and people. So we’re introducing the camp moc. L.L. Bean is a camp brand.

We know that now, but you’ll notice that there’s the camp blanket, the camp chair, the camp short, the camp moc, the camp shoe, the camp jacket – everything is based around camp because camp at the time of L.L. Bean’s founding was this explosive new crazy mind-bending thing for America.

The Camp Culture Revolution That Changed America

In the late 1800s, a huge shift across the world started to happen, well across Europe, where basically everybody was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know if cities are that good for people to be in for long amounts of time.’ This guy, William H.H. Murray, wrote the book Adventures Into the Wilderness.

In his book, he essentially said, ‘Hey, city people, nature is really good. It’s not just for exploration and treacherous journeys or anything like that. You can find peace and spirituality. You’ll really love it out there. You can bond. Boys, specifically, will become men in the wilderness because they’re getting very soft right now.’

Suddenly, we have national parks, Teddy Roosevelt is swinging around on a moose campaigning, trains are getting very popular, and summer camps are just starting in the USA. The Ford Model T dropped in 1908, then the Boy Scouts hit the US in 1910, and by then, summer camps were going viral, and in 10 years, one thousand summer camps popped up all over the USA.

L.L. Bean was founded in 1912 – the mood was to get back out into nature and vacate your homes, and that is why the US goes on vacations and most of the rest of the world goes on holidays.

All these people that live in the city were like, ‘Hey, I might get a little camp in Maine that I go to when I’m vacationing that doesn’t have electricity ’cause I’m roughing it, I’m back in nature, I’m feeling connected’ and who of course did they look to as their role models of people that are connected to nature?

Native Americans. And that became the essence of summer camps, of camp culture, of anything returning to nature – Native American culture.

The problem is people in 1936 that had a camp in Maine also live in the city and they’re saying to L.L. Bean, ‘Hey, I want to wear my moccasins in the city, but the pavement, the asphalt is eating up the leather so how can we fix that?.’

L.L. Bean says, ‘Not a problem, we’ll take a moccasin and we’ll add a rubber sole to the bottom so when you go home you can walk on pavement, you can drive your car, you could do everything that you want, city boy, and you can dress in the ivy league style.’ But then we run into the problem with L.L. Bean’s modern-day moccasin.

The Modern L.L. Bean Problem: When Moccasins Become “Just Slippers”

The L.L. Bean Camp moc just ripped. It’s incredibly successful, it’s always successful, it’s always being bought. All the reviews say essentially, ‘I buy one to two pairs of these every year.’ Then we get to L.L. Bean’s slippers.

This is their Wicked Good slipper. I never wear mine, not a slipper guy, but still, L.L. Bean’s more modern-day achievement is that they totally perfected the slipper.

It’s beautiful, and it’s fascinating to look at. I love the rubber bottom. Everything about this is perfect, and everybody in my high school wore these because I’m from New England. All the girls with their Dunkin Donuts coffees that I had crushes on, they all wore these shoes.

Then you have the moccasin, which is a precursor to the camp moc but definitely not a slipper, so why do they call it a slipper? Essentially now, all of L.L. Bean’s customers – and this is not specific to L.L. Bean; this is pretty widespread – everybody is around asphalt, pavement, and concrete where they would rip up their leather soles if they wore these as shoes all day, so they have to be considered slippers because you’d only wear them in the house on soft surfaces or like wood surfaces.

I think – I can’t say for sure, I’m not in L.L. Bean – they’re doing tiered production, so their top-of-the-line products, their Camp moc, and their slippers get all the attention and third place and lower than that kind of gets shafted, and you see a big decrease in quality or the biggest decrease in quality.

So, if we look at this picture of the same moc from the 80s, that moccasin looks beautiful. Typically, with moccasins, you expect at least a semi-supple leather. This leather – not very supple. Obviously, we can’t ignore the price. We’ll get to that in a second. That’s a huge deal, but let’s look at the insole. L.L. Bean says this is leather on top, very foamy on the side, and then we have obviously leather lining, too.

And then remember when I said the ethos of moccasins is keep it simple stupid? It’s leather wrapped around your foot, and that should be it. You should be connected to the ground, and you should be able to feel things.

L.L. Bean, I feel like since they changed the leather so much and it’s quite a thin leather, these two sole pieces equal what one piece used to be, so it would feel weird if they didn’t put a giant thick piece of foam in between you and the leather.

So, really, I think what L.L. Bean is trying to do – and it may sound like I’m saying they’re evil for doing this, I’m not trying to say that – I’m just saying what they’re trying to do is blind you with comfort through foam and not through your feet molding to leather, and it feels when you’re walking on this foam like you’re walking on a cylinder of foam that will break down over time as you use it.

But the real rub of it all is even though these are double-soled moccasins that were originally meant for going on canoes, walking outside, walking around camp, and everything.

If you did that now, you’d wear through these very quickly because the leather is so thin, and you’d hit foam, and you think these are trash, water’s coming in, I don’t want to wear them at all anymore, and you would think ‘I don’t want to buy L.L. Bean moccasins, they’re not good quality.’

But the thing is, if L.L. Bean says, ‘Well, these aren’t moccasins. These are slippers,’ then it’s your fault because slippers are meant to be inside on soft surfaces. So these are good slippers, but they had to downgrade from a moccasin to get to that point.

The Epic Tale of RB Slater’s 1,800-Mile Journey

And then, of course, we have the Oneida.

These are not built like L.L. Bean moccasins from the 80s – these are built like L.L. Bean moccasins from the 80s on steroids. These are jacked up, these are bonkers – so bonkers in fact that I asked Luke, their CEO, ‘Hey, are these meant to be indoor focused mainly because they’re moccasins?’ because I was under the notion too that you can’t wear leather in the woods, and he referred me to a story from 1922 that made me look like an idiot, but it’s an amazing story.

In Russell’s 1925 catalog, there’s a story from a man named RB Slater in which he says: ‘You will recall in the spring of 1922 I communicated with your company relative to a trip which I contemplated making on foot with a pack horse from Vancouver to Alaska. It has occurred to me that your company would be interested in receiving an account of the journey together with the return of the Ike Walton – the boots which have accompanied me throughout the trip. I have worn them for 153 consecutive days, during which they have covered a distance of over 1,800 miles. They have traversed mountains, forests, barren landscapes, wilderness, swamps, forded rivers, and creeks and have trailed over snow for days at a time on the eventful journey during the varied climates encountered on my route.’

The Ike Walton boots that RB Slater wore on a 1,800-mile trip by foot used the exact same construction as the Russell moccasin Oneida – same outsole, same materials on the inside, everything’s the same.

And I’m in the corner talking to Luke like, ‘Luke, do you think they’d be good to go on a brief walk outside?’ Also, I just feel like I should acknowledge the fact that I know these are three times more expensive than L.L. Bean.

I’m not saying, like, don’t get L.L. Bean. Get these instead. There’s, of course, plenty of stuff in between L.L. Bean and Russell Moccasins, plenty of great Maine-made brands, and stuff like that, but you can’t get any higher than Russell. That’s why it’s fun to talk about.

Getting Technical: The Butts and Bolts of Moccasin Construction

Today, the outsole is incredibly interesting and very different. It’s an 8 oz bull hide from Seidel. It’s a very beefy leather that is stuffed with oils and waxes for extra water resistance. It feels greasy and wet.

So, the outsole right away, I would estimate, is two times thicker than L.L. Bean’s. Then, under the outsole, we have another chunk of leather of the same thickness called a slip sole, which is 8 oz. Then we hit the vamp, which is 4 and 1/2 oz leather, which is also very heavy and supple, you know, whatever.

Then, obviously, we have the final insole layer of leather, which is 4 1/2 oz of leather again.

RB Slater, the guy that walked 1,800 miles, wore through the outsole and then the slip sole, so he didn’t touch the vamp of his shoes, which means that you could just pop those two off, resole the boots, and they’d be good to go.

But either way, time to talk about butt stitches. Nothing wrong with a butt stitch – you’ve probably seen as many butt stitches as you have butts in real life because you see two to every one butt. Now that I said that, you will probably notice a distinct lack of butts on Russell moccasin products – all of them.

In 1910, a man at Russell named Theofil Luzinski invented the overlap seam. If you compare the overlap seam to a butt seam, the butt seam is way less durable and way less water resistant, so it’s not good to Russell, so they don’t use it.

The overlap seam drives up cost because, on average, it takes four to five times longer to do than a butt seam which means the cost of labor to make these goes up much higher. The other main difference is wet lasting – picture a piece of paper and picture a set of cups.

Regular moccasins are made by taking a piece of paper, folding it up, butt-stitching it all together, and then letting it go. Russell moccasins, on the other hand – picture a cup, you have a cup, you put another cup in, you could stitch those two cups together, but they already have shape, they already are taken to a form, you’re just stitching them all together.

Butt stitches both on the front and on the back are a byproduct of not wet lasting, and by wet lasting, you can avoid butt stitches and not have them in the back because you’re sewing cups together, so the leather is already in the right shape.

Now, according to Luke, wet lasting allows them to use much, much heavier leathers throughout, and then finally, like I was saying, you could have the world-famous overlap seam to create the indestructible moccasin.

Watch This Review

The Mind-Blowing Final Fact About the Oneida

Before we totally wrap up this Russell Moccasin Oneida review, let me leave you with the most fun fact of this article – thank you so much for reading, by the way.

I appreciate you.

The Oneida is the foundation of every single Russell moccasin product. If you add leather up to the top going up your leg and you add a vegetable tan midsole and a rubber outsole, it’ll be a boot.

The Oneida is the foundation of it all. You’re essentially adding or taking away things from the Oneida to make all of Russell Moccasin’s other products.

Luke told me that, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re right,’ and he was like, ‘I own the company, of course, I’m right,’ and I was like, ‘Wow, you’re – you’re right dude, you’re right, you’re right.’ So I thought that was cool.

This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from Fashion’s Digest, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.

The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.