# "camp sole": Can anyone explain it to me?



## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

While perusing various forums here in addition to the Quoddy and Russell websites, I've become acquainted with camp soles, which I recognize from the 80s. Girls in my very preppy neighborhood wore bluchers with camp soles. I don't know what brand they were wearing. Anyway, can someone explain to me the origin/purpose of the camp sole? Do they have any particular virtues?


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## dmac (Jun 30, 2006)

The origin/purpose was for milling about camp, i.e. what vacationers in Maine call their summer houses. These can range from something small and rustic by a pond or a large Bar Harbor manse. They perform that job nicely, though I don't notice any difference, on land anyway, between the camp sole, still in use on most Quoddy models, and the nonslip Topsider style sole that LL Bean started putting on all its bluchers about 10 years ago (replacing the camp sole).


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## dmac (Jun 30, 2006)

Oh, and the design, I'm guessing, is a more weatherproof take on the flat leather bottomed Indian moccasin.


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## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

So basically they're good for lounging about the house and yard, but not necessarily walking?

All the girls wore them in my school. The preppy boys wore deck shoes. I don't recall seeing men in camp shoes at all. If I recall correctly, I wore Chuck Taylors at the time.


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## Starch (Jun 28, 2010)

Just to confirm what people refer to with the phrase "camp sole:" to me, anyway, it's a brownish rubber sole - very similar to a typical Topsider boat-shoe sole, except (going in order from most noticeable difference to least): brown, instead of off-white; no siping; heel is only slightly higher than the sole (a tad less so than a Topsider sole, which is also pretty flat as shoes go); no heel-break; little "scoop out" in center of heel instead.

I'm sort of surprised that someone would take much note of who wears shoes with this sole. Except for the color, one would need to be pretty attentive to tell the difference between it and the brownish sole found on a lots of "non-iconic" boat shoes (Timberlands, for example).

I think the camp sole works fine for walking. As dmac notes, it's functionally well-nigh-identical to a Topsider sole, except perhaps on a wet boat deck (and maybe not even then, if it's a modern fiberglass boat deck with the traction stuff on it).

Deck shoes (assuming we're talking about Topsider-esque shoes) _are_ bluchers. They're not wildly different(1) from the LL Bean-esque camp mocs, and both always seemed to be worn by approximately(2) the same group of people in my experience.

Incidentally, the old-style camp sole, or a pretty close version of it, still appears on the LL Bean signature moc.

(1) Differences:
- The sole color, though not really, as lots of boat shoes also have brown sole (or non-white, anyway)
- Details of the sole that you'd really only notice if you were holding the shoes in your hand ... and how often do you hold other people's shod feet in your hand, even if they are preppy girls?
- Absence of the lace around the heel on boat shoes (really the only definitive difference).
- Tendency to have more eyelets, though there are camp mocs with just four.
- Tendency to have boot-style orange laces, rather than leather laces, though people change them.
- Tendency toward different leather (darker, pebble-grain), though the classes of shoes overlap here.
- Details of construction, though there are as many - if not more - differences among different brands of boat shoes.

(2) Full-on original-style Topsiders (though often lookalikes of a knockoff brand) were, in the heyday of the OPH, probably more common among slavish trendies.


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## hardline_42 (Jan 20, 2010)

I always understood it to be as previously described by Starch: Wedge sole (no defined heel), pebbled finish (as opposed to siped), "door stop" scoop and a harder compound than a boat shoe sole. I don't know that any other features of the shoe matter in this case, since I see camp soles on both camp mocs (bluchers) and canoe mocs (one-eyed boat shoes) as well as chukkas etc.


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## dwebber18 (Jun 5, 2008)

I'll give a dissenting opinion to the comments that these are good for walking. I've got Quoddy canoe mocs with the camp sole, and I don't care to walk very far in them. They are very comfortable shoes and I would recommend them to anyone but I'm not a fan of walking in the camp sole. I took them to NYC with me and they killed my heels while walking and hindered me the next day in different shoes. I would recommend the vibram sole or the boat sole, the camp sole has the cutout from the middle of the foot through the heel and my heel tends to stretch through and touch the ground and I believe this is the problem. I believe when I have to get new soles I'll go with the vibram soles they offer as I think they would be much more comfortable for me. Maybe if you aren't as heavy as me they would be more comfortable as I might just be too heavy for that sole style.


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## dmac (Jun 30, 2006)

When I said milling about camp, I didn't mean just sitting, although that's included. They're a great vacation shoe and can be used for: grilling, light yard work, a short walk after dinner, tossing a frisbee, canoeing, going to town for an ice cream cone, going to the lobster pound, leisurely fishing, wearing with khakis and a blazer to a cocktail party at a neighbor's camp, catching turtles or baby crabs with your kids, etc., etc. Camp shoes are rooted in a more formal time in both their design and their nomenclature, and are kind of a flip flop from an era when most adult men wore hard leather soled shoes unless they were playing sports. I find water, even salt water, doesn't seem to affect them much, and they can be dressed up in a pinch. The rise of the suburbs and suburban lifestyles over the past fifty years has increased their popularity immensely. They're not good for walking in large cities, as an earlier poster points out, nor for extreme terrain, but for short walks on a boardwalk, beach, or lawn, or running errands around a small town or the suburbs, they are great (if you don't have issues with arch support).


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## katon (Dec 25, 2006)

A camp sole is something on a camp shoe. Basically the idea being that after a long day spent in hunting or hiking boots, you'd switch out to a camp shoe to allow your feet to recover. However, unlike, say, slippers, camp shoes need to be functional in an outdoors environment, hence the camp sole.


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## Cardinals5 (Jun 16, 2009)

I think almost all the girls at my school wore Eastland or Bass blucher mocs, Eastland was more popular, and they all used what later came to be known as the "Eastland Knot". I love camp soles - regularly wear Quoddy camp mocs, Sebago Campsides camp mocs, and Sebago Campsides blucher mocs. Use them for walking the dog around the neighborhood, short errands, puttering around the house...


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## hardline_42 (Jan 20, 2010)

dmac said:


> When I said milling about camp, I didn't mean just sitting, although that's included. They're a great vacation shoe and can be used for: grilling, light yard work, a short walk after dinner, tossing a frisbee, canoeing, going to town for an ice cream cone, going to the lobster pound, leisurely fishing, wearing with khakis and a blazer to a cocktail party at a neighbor's camp, catching turtles or baby crabs with your kids, etc., etc. Camp shoes are rooted in a more formal time in both their design and their nomenclature, and are kind of a flip flop from an era when most adult men wore hard leather soled shoes unless they were playing sports. I find water, even salt water, doesn't seem to affect them much, and they can be dressed up in a pinch. The rise of the suburbs and suburban lifestyles over the past fifty years has increased their popularity immensely. They're not good for walking in large cities, as an earlier poster points out, nor for extreme terrain, but for short walks on a boardwalk, beach, or lawn, or running errands around a small town or the suburbs, they are great (if you don't have issues with arch support).


This is exactly the type of activities I use them for. I have a hard time seeing a camp sole as a "specialty" sole for walking or anything like that. It's just another casual, comfortable shoe to wear when everyone else is in sneakers or flip flops.


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## The Rambler (Feb 18, 2010)

I find the rubber camp sole to be a lot more flexible than the alternatives, so the mocs feel more like soleless mocassins. Not so much designed for long walks, but wonderful for lounging.


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## tocqueville (Nov 15, 2009)

I remember those knots on the end of shoe laces.

I really ought to just ask some of my high school female friends what it was they were wearing. But here's a question: why was it that only girls war these shoes? The boys tended to wear different kinds of sneakers, but the really preppy ones wore classic boat deck shoes (sockless).



Cardinals5 said:


> I think almost all the girls at my school wore Eastland or Bass blucher mocs, Eastland was more popular, and they all used what later came to be known as the "Eastland Knot". I love camp soles - regularly wear Quoddy camp mocs, Sebago Campsides camp mocs, and Sebago Campsides blucher mocs. Use them for walking the dog around the neighborhood, short errands, puttering around the house...


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## WouldaShoulda (Aug 5, 2009)

I wear boat/camp mocs walking form the couch to the refrigerator.

Longer journeys require a more appropriate shoe!!


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