After so many years of wearing running shoes and hiking shoes, I'd forgotten what real shoes felt like, but these are nice and required wear about twice a year. The black leather is nice and has a kind of pebbled texture that I like. The shoes are very good quality I think, but yes they're a bit stiff out of the box (big surprise!). Kind of surprised to hear of a few people saying they're cracking and I hope that doesn't happen but I'll read more about softening the leather up--though really they're pretty good right out of the box. The soles have a little bit of a cross-hatching to them that I think makes them a lot less likely to go slip-sliding away.