New Berendt Book Retells L.L. Bean's Early Boot Failure

Garden & Gun published an excerpt on October 13, 2026, from "Class Act," a new collection of John Berendt's Esquire men's style columns from the 1980s and 1990s released that day by Vintage Books, that recounts the origins of the L.L. Bean boot.

According to the excerpt, Leon Leonwood Bean designed a boot pairing a leather upper with a rubber sole to keep hunters' feet dry, made 100 pairs of the Maine Hunting Shoe in his brother's basement and sold them through a mailer sent to out-of-state buyers of Maine hunting licenses. Ninety pairs came back after the stitching separated the sole from the upper. Bean answered with a triple-line stitching method still used today.

Bean patented the shoe in 1920 and the "Split Backstay" seam in 1921, and the Freeport retailer marks the patent issue dates, January 11 and April 5, as a "patent-iversary." Lisa Birnbach's 1980 book "The Official Preppy Handbook" ranked the boots second among preppy footwear, behind G.H. Bass's Weejuns; by then they were widely called Bean Boots.

The classic versions now run about $150 to $300 in six-, eight- and 10-inch heights, with shearling, fleece or flannel linings and roughly half a dozen earth-toned colors, Garden & Gun reported. Competing versions from other makers have created a category known as duck boots.

This story was first reported by Garden & Gun.