At the risk of scuffing some boots, I must admit that seeing the likes of Kendal Jenner, Karlie Kloss, and Gwen Stefani wearing Timberland boots in temperate California weather while someone holds their bag or pumps their gas is quite cringeworthy. The same cringe goes for New York City dwellers who wear their “Timbs” to the beach during the summer with shorts that reach their ankles and a “wife beater.” For kids growing up in New York City who typically commute thirty to forty-five minutes five days a week to and from school, no matter how inclement the weather keeping our feet warm and dry from door to door is a crucial objective. Personally, I do not recall ever asking to own a pair of Timberlands, but I do remember having them, as did my brothers and most of my friends. Some owned the basic (and less expensive) version, some the premium version, and some had knockoffs. Initially, most of us wore them because we had to and eventually because we wanted to. They are stylish, comfortable, rugged, and having a fresh, creaseless pair of “Timbs” shows that you are on top of your game and have everything you need to thrive in the concrete jungles of America.
For many New Yorkers, Timberland boots are a staple associated with New York City's mastery of street style, sweater weather, and surviving icy winter commutes, but as it turns out, Timberlands are an internationally revered American product, cultural icon, and fashion accessory, with a rich and complicated (albeit relatively young) history, replete with impassioned debates over who first wore and popularized the boot. Is it the shoe of New England's blue-collar working class? Is it the boot of inner-city youth surviving brutal winter commutes to school? Is it the boot of hip-hop culture? Or is it the boot of the wealthy, famous, and largely Anglo consumers who feel entitled to appropriate urban culture and its use of workwear? Or could it be a boot for all? Timberland boots have taken on a life of their own, transcending borders, socioeconomic status, cultures, and identities, and while the company’s owners previously denied the influence of urban and hip-hop culture, today the VP Corporation seeks to capitalize on the boots universal appeal to the working class, racialised minorities, and the rich and famous.
In 1952, Nathan Swartz, a skilled shoemaker bought 50% of Abington Shoe Company for twenty-thousand dollars in Abington, Massachusetts (Pederson 2003, 375). He and his sons Sidney and Herman Swartz “produced and sold handmade footwear to discount outlets and stores that put house labels on them” (Pederson 2003, 375). By 1965 the company made a manufacturing upgrade that would change the trajectory and eventually the name of the company. The "Swartzes purchased an injection-moulding machine [and pioneered] a new [shoe] binding process that chemically folded and attached soles to uppers” (Pederson 2003, 375). They may have not immediately realised it, but this machine would help produce and design the iconic yellow, waterproof, wheat nubuck, original Timberland boot that would grow to become an American cultural icon. The company sought to create a durable worker boot that would revolutionize the footwear industry and “after persuading Goodyear to design a synthetic rubber sole capable of withstanding the harshest elements, the Swartzes used injection-moulding to bond the polyurethane soles to genuine blond leather uppers” (Pederson 2003, 375). In 1973 they created the Abington Shoe Company’s first-ever thoroughly waterproof boot and called it “Timberland.” According to the company, the boot was designed for working-class industry workers and were sold at Army-Navy stores. Soon the Timberlands were being worn by students in campuses throughout New England. The new boots sold extremely well and in 1978 the brother's rebranded the Abington Shoe Company and called it the Timberland Company (Pederson 2003, 375-76) after the injection-moulded yellow boot that would soon adorn the feet of fashionistas, urban youth, and hip-hop superstars around the world.
In 1979, the iconic Timberland boot's popularity began to spread globally when Italian goods distributor and president of Ritz Forma, Giuseppe Veronesi, visited the Timberland factory and ordered 3,000 pairs to have shipped to Italy, where he predicted they would become the “perfect fashion accessory for well-heeled Italians.” Veronesi oversaw brands like Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren’s Polo line, and he sought out to test the boot’s marketability in the "haute couture shops [of] Milan and Rome” (Pederson 2003, 377). Soon it was clear that affluent fashionistas were attracted to the design and were willing to pay premium for the boot. The boot's manufacturers worked diligently to meet this newfound international demand.
According to Fox Butterfield, a New York Times journalist, brothers Sidney and Herman Swartz laughed aloud when in 1985 he showed them an Italian newspaper article reporting that "hoodlums" in Milan, Italy were robbing the shoes off people's feet, instead of the wallets out of their pockets. These petty thieves were not after just any shoe, they were targeting Timberland's coveted Original Yellow BootTM. Although amused and flattered, the Swartz brothers hesitated on expanding their marketing efforts. They were committed to their original intention of supplying a revolutionary, fully waterproof, leather work boot to New England's blue-collar industry workers. But the Swartz brothers were soon convinced by their marketing firm that not spending advertising dollars capturing the attention of this newer, wealthier, and more fashionable consumer demographic would cost the company revenue. Soon, the Original Yellow BootTM was being marketed to "affluent urban backpackers" (Butterfield 1985) and being sold in Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and was reaching consumers in France, Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Turkey; sales in Italy also continued to grow (Pederson 2003, 376). It became evident the Swartz brothers were willing to meet their active consumer wherever they were. The boot was no longer just being worn by the working-class but also by the chic and “affluent urban backpacker" and the Swartzes planned to spend the advertising and marketing dollars to meet their needs.
Eight years later, in 1993, Jeffrey Swartz, son of Sidney Swartz, was not laughing as hard as his father and uncle when Michel Marriott of The New York Times once again wanted to discuss the growing popularity of Timberland boots as a fashion item being worn as an accessory to urban streetwear in cities across America, this time by Black and Brown urban youths seen strutting up and down the concrete catwalks with "Timbs" on their feet while emulating hip-hop culture. The New York Times article cited Jeffrey Swartz's dismissive attitude towards the urban youths and hip-hop customer base. He denied that Black and Brown urban youths and the hip-hop consumer represented a viable market worth investing the company's advertising money into. It is worth noting that reports show that "between 1991 and 2000, Timberland’s profits increased from $80 million to over $500 million, and by 2000, revenues passed $1 billion, according to the SEC" (Webb, 2020). During this time rappers including the late Notorious B.I.G., Nas, and Lauryn Hill were lyrically and aesthetically endorsing Timberlands urban appeal in their songs and music videos. Still Jeffery Swartz insisted this consumer base only accounted for 5% of sales and said he would not build his business on "smoke," projecting the company was "cutting back the number of doors [they] do business in…[so] if [someone] wants to buy [Timberlands] and [they] are not [Timberland's] target customer [and they] do not have a point of distribution that speaks to [their] lifestyle, [the company will] make [those] hip-hop [consumers] come to [its] distribution" points (NYT, 1993). In the interview, Swartz recounted the “inner-city youngsters” he observed in a Dillard’s store in Little Rock, Arkansas, going straight to the Timberland section, acknowledging that Dillard's and other high-end department stores were "making an extra profit" every time Black and Brown urban youths had to travel out of their neighborhoods in search of goods not made readily available to them. One can determine that the choice to only sell Timberlands in high-end department stores worked to funnel working-class dollars out of lower-income communities and pumped them into communities where Timberland's more dignified and desirable consumers shopped and lived.
By this time in the 90s, Timberland was a publicly traded company whose boots were sold and marketed in countries around the world. Why then was Jeffrey Swartz refusing to meet Black and Brown American urban consumers at their convenience? Although Jeffrey Swartz has flatly denied icing out minority youths and hip-hop culture, he still refused to acknowledge the impact hip-hop and urban culture had on the boot's popularity claiming that, "the urban market constitutes less than 5 percent of the company's domestic sales, which account for 60 percent of Timberland's global market" (Marriott 1993) but acknowledged "their money spends good." Why must Black and Brown urban community and working-class, continue to have to prove their worth? Our dollars matter and "spend good" but in some twisted, real-life plot everything we do, wear, and eat is considered "hood" or "ghetto" until it is appropriated by some rich white person who grabs at our culture as their colonizer ancestors once grabbed at our lands: unapologetically and audaciously. Julia Chance, the fashion editor of The Source magazine griped to Marriott of The New York Times that she believes manufacturers often "think that if their clothes are celebrated in the Black, urban community, with all its ills, that it will cheapen their brand names." Chance called out the fact that the cultural appropriation of the Black and urban community's fashion style is often seen on the runways and everyone knows brands and fashion designers "are inspired by black folk, and now some of these companies are saying our dollars don't count" (NYT, 1993). Timberland responded with a 1993 marketing campaign that pledged to "Give Racism the Boot" but Jeffrey Swartz refused to accept the positive impact Black and Brown consumer dollars were having on the company's bottom line helped reinforce Chance's claims. Swartz would later accuse The New York Times of "character assassination" in an op-ed published by a Black-owned newspaper called the New York Amsterdam News (Webb 2020). While Swartz claimed the Times was sensationalizing racism to sell newspapers, some believed it was undeniable that Swartz slighted the hip-hop and the Black and Brown community by refusing to acknowledge their contribution to the boot's popularity.
The company's approach to how it aligns itself with minority communities and hip-hop culture began to shift when Jeffrey Swartz sold the company in 2011 to retail conglomerate VP Corporation. Since then, there has been a change in how the company interacts with America's urban, Black, and Brown consumers. Since its acquisition of the Timberland Company, VP Corporation began to create collaborations with brands and celebrities that appeal directly to the hip-hop and urban communities, but by then, trust had been broken. A marketing video dubbed "Build Forward" was published in November 2021 by Timberland on its Facebook page. The video starts with the words “the conversation,” written in white letters across the screen and the narrator begins with the words “we’re sorry” (Facebook 2021). It is unclear who they were apologizing to, but hip-hop music played in the background as images of the Brooklyn Bridge and New York City neighborhood barbershops flooded the screen. A friend who also grew up in New York City recounted that she was called a "refugee" and relentlessly bullied because her family could only afford Timberland counterfeits. She watched Timberland's Facebook apology video and was offended to the core. In retrospect, she resents the company for refusing to respect and acknowledge the contributions of Black Americans to their brand. It is a hurtful irony that we got made fun of for wearing a knockoff version of a boot created by company that did not want to credit the impact Black and Brown youths have on their profit margins, American style, and culture. The strength of the Black and Brown dollar has proven its worth, and now that inclusivity is a national trend, this Facebook apology by the VP Corporation is just too little, too late.
The pair of Timberlands I currently own was a Christmas gift. As I reflected upon why I decided to return to Timberland as a consumer, I remembered loving the way they looked on my feet. The flawless nubuck grain and the solid weight of the shoe give the wearer a sense of style, determination, and belonging. Timberland boots are classics that connect me to my identity as a representative of urban culture and a person of color. Timberland boots have many claimants and an abundance of stories to tell. They have walked a billion miles around the globe and will continue to pound pavements, adorn the feet of wealthy cultural and class-appropriators, make cameos in hip-hop videos, survive the grind of industry workers and brutal wintertime city commutes, and the test of time. The double-edged sword of Anglo curiosity and its insatiable thirst to grab from what little culture it has not destroyed or stolen cuts deep. With all its street credit, working-class ruggedness, and boundless reach, the Timberland boot is a symbol of American artisanship, style, appropriation, excessive consumerism, and socioeconomic divides.
When I began my research into Timberland's history, I thought I knew where it would take me., but the journey turned out to be a complicated one. What started as a small, no frills shoe company, whose identity was heavily reliant on a boot created and designed for hardworking industry workers, is now a Goliath, manufacturing one of the most revolutionary and iconic footwear designs in recent memory. The research confirmed that the Timberland boot is a coveted American cultural icon with a thorny history and a diverse consumer base. It is a highly distinguishable shoe with a built-in versatility that will continue to inspire and serve the working-class, New York City street-style, fashionistas, and Anglo appropriators for decades to come. Timberlands are not only worn for their durability and practicality, but also for their stylish appearance. Over the last 30 years, they have transformed from a utilitarian work shoe into a fashion accessory worn by many people of diverse backgrounds representing many cultures from all around the world.
REFERENCES
Butterfield, Fox. 1985. “Shoes That Sell - Made in America.” The New York Times, August 18, 1985. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/18/business/shoes-that-sell-made-in-america.html.
"Build Forward. Timberland: Build Forward." Facebook, December 17, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=302890031509115.
Marriott, Michel. 1993. “Out of the Woods.” The New York Times, November 7, 1993. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/07/style/out-of-the-woods.html.
Pederson, Jay P, ed. 1970. International Directory of Company Histories. Vol. 54: Detroit: St. James Press. https://archive.org/details/internationaldir0054unse/page/376/mode/1up.
Timberland. 2019. "Timberland Factory Disclosure Postal.” Accessed November 19, 2021. https://images.timberland.com/is/content/TimberlandBrand/Responsibility/downloads/2019/Q3%202019%20Factory%20List%20FORMATTED.pdf.
Webb, Alysha. “How Hip Hop's Love of the Iconic Yellow Workboot Helped Make Timberland a Billion-Dollar Company.” CNBC Make It. December 20, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/20/how-timberland-became-billion-dollar-company.html
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