Abstract

Upper leather, with two types of finish, has been made into boys’ shoes and worn for periods of 3, 9 and 27 weeks before measuring the permeability of the upper leather in the vamp region of the shoe. Highly significant increases in permeability were observed, resulting from wear, which could be fitted reasonably to linear regression equations of permeability on time of wear. The overall increase in permeability was approximately 20-fold in 27 weeks wear for one leather and 40-fold for the second leather. An important factor in causing this increase is the repetitive flexing of the upper in the vamp region. This flexing is more severe in its action, after 27 weeks’ wear, in increasing permeability than 400,000 flexes with the Satra Vamp Flexer.