I’m not mad at you, I’m just disappointed. There are few parenting quips that sting more than this.
Upon opening and trying on my OluKai Pikoi’s, I was not mad, just disappointed. After working my way through several pairs, I’ve come to appreciate the OluKai brand and was looking forward to another properly sized well-crafted set.
To be fair – these Pikoi are well crafted (mostly) and properly fitting…but they require a lot of commitment. Maybe it’s back to the parenting, I’ll only get out of these what I put into them.
“I’m not mad at you, I’m just disappointed.”
The initial feel is not great. The leather strap is very stiff, it’s not even stylish-stiff, it’s just a bulky chunk of leather.
Like all the OluKai’s I have, they are a bit lose. So, as usual with OluKai’s, I wish these were tighter fitting, the footbed is the right size, but the strap is lose enough that it becomes uncomfortable after a few hours of wear as I work to keep them on my feet which requires heroic levels of toe curl.
They are undoubtedly stylish. They could go anywhere in America – somehow, they feel too big and…just not refined enough for anywhere else.
They sort of scream “I tried to dress up, give me credit!” …. Maybe the opposite of the guy who wears the black Ecco slip-ons with a suit – Does that really work in Northern Europe? No amount of trying will make these anything other than the flipflop for the American who’s looking for “high end” while still playing it safe.
The thick strap doesn’t make them any more secure, it just adds to the confusion and clumsy disheveled strap look, wrinkling at the seam.
Upon first wear, this wrinkle would jab into the side of my foot for an unpleasant push every time my foot would come down. Now with a bit more wear, I can feel the leather getting into its rhythm, but it still has an ugly protruding look to it.
“The sum is less than the parts, like a Cadillac Escalade.”
I think the biggest issue I have is that after the first two days of wear, some of the leather had begun to delaminate from the footbed. For the cost and all the marketing hype, I expect more than what I’d get in a pair of disposable flip flops.
After putting these on and doing a quick coffee trip, I had to come back and quickly check to see if they were in fact real leather. I was afraid that “Nubuck” was the same as leatherette; no, it’s just that the wax takes a while to wear off, until then it feels like stiff faux leather wrapping.
The souls. I like the grip and the traction isn’t bad, but they feel really disjoined from the uppers. The leather upper, although big bold and AMERICAN, the sole is also big bold and AMERICAN, and ostensibly the same idea, they are tan, with a nice profile. But it feels like these two parts of the shoe come from totally different places.
Like they are from the same league, but very different teams. The sum is less than the parts, like a Cadillac Escalade.
