Picture a pair of velskoene. In your mind’s eye you’re probably seeing a man with tanned legs in khaki shorts, knee-high socks and a pair of worn leather shoes with deep creases, scuff marks and stains – evidence that they’ve lasted for years. The design of the shoe is classic: lightbrown leather hugging the ankle, a row of stitching where the upper meets the sole, and laces threaded through three pairs of eyelets. A shoe for a farmer, a labourer, an outdoorsy kind of person – plain yet tough.
Sometime during the past few years this modest leather shoe has gained a new following. These days, you’ll spot everyone from Instagram influencers to Prince Harry wearing vellies. Even the South African team at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, were shod in suede vellies with colourful soles and laces.
It has always been an authentically South African shoe, but now it has also become a local pop culture icon.
It all started in the Cederberg
First question: The English dictionary has it as veldskoen with a “d”, so what is the correct spelling? “We call it a velskoen,” says JJ du Plessis, MD of Strassbergers Shoes, “because it’s made of vel [‘hide’].” He laughs. “But if you wear your vellies in the veld I suppose you can call it
