Not exactly a winner...
You can usually count on RiverTrail Mercantile's photos to be an accurate guide to what you receive. And often with Old Gringo, even the best photos don't do the boots justice. I had just the opposite experience with the OG Villas. I savored the photos and the happy reviews for a while before taking the plunge, but -- gasp -- viscerally hated these boots when they arrived. The colorway isn't just lackluster, it's terminally dull. The turquoise accents don't register. Nothing pops. The green is a flat, washed out sage with none of the citron-hued tonal variations which give the boots photographed by RiverTrail personality and flair. I wouldn't call the color of the decorative leather overlays "rust." A true reddish rust with some polish and layered depth might have done something to lift this boot, but the OG designers chose a matte light brown which simply compounds the shabby monotony of these boots. The ornamentation looks clownish rather than ruggedly Western with all those durn spots. Put some bells on and maybe the court jester'd be happy to prance in them. The real surprise was to find the leather so roughed up -- more like a distressed suede than the smoother matte leather indicated by RiverTrail's photos. The irregular pebbly dark print was also poorly matched between boots, particularly from the rear view. One boot was heavily spotted in back, the other plain. No fit around the ankle of either boot, with the shaft and vamp of the right boot very visibly fatter than the left. Even tried on, they look like you are wearing boots of different sizes.. The leather had a pretty bad smell. Gave me a sore throat. I could't get them packed up fast enough to return and this is a customer who has never returned anything before. Consider yourself warned.
