Fallen Footwear and most other skate shoe companies design their shoes specifically for use in street/park skateboarding, so while the tech, features and intended destiny of destruction are tailored to skaters, they’re fine for basically any other life, skate, scoot or riding experience as well.

The features of skate shoes

Fallen Footwear uses a range of natural and synthetic materials selected for durability and performance. You’ll find combinations of leather, suede, nubuck, polyester, cotton twill, canvas, vegan alternatives and many sub variations of the preceding materials.

While the shoe's upper material has a lot to do with the style and durability, the biggest deciding difference of skate shoes is the outsole tech. A Vulcanised construction has thinner rubber to give greater boardfeel where a Cupsole has a moulded, thicker rubber sole for greater impact cushioning and protection.

Many insoles have supporting design features to get the most performance out of your skate shoes, Fallen Footwear’s ImpactFoam2 is used across the line, giving great performance for both cupsole and vulcanised silhouettes.

While all of this sounds good, the fact is that your skate shoes are going to be making constant contact with your skateboards griptape, so they will get torn, shredded and worn down eventually, but hey, that’s the point!

Vulcanized Construction
Cupsole Construction

Take care of your new skate shoes

There’s plenty of things you can do to extend the life of your skate shoes, but ultimately they’re designed to be used & abused, like with anything you should try to keep them out of extreme weather, don't expose them to chemicals or oils and keep them dry inside & out.

If you’re not in the position to buy new skate shoes when they’re starting to get a torn upper from those endless flip tricks, a silicon product like Shoe Goo can extend your skate shoes lifespan quite significantly. While this is good there’s not much fix for wearing through the bottom of the sole, if your feet are literally touching the ground it’s definitely time for some new kicks.

As a preemptive defence some skaters swear by using a little bit of superglue along the stitching in the flick/heel/typical wear areas. This will reinforce the stitching, keeping the shoe’s upper together and improving it’s lifespan. Careful not to get too much on the surrounding fabric and sole, depending on the materials it can react poorly to the glue and lose grip and flexibility.

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