These shoes hold up well. Two things that should be better:
- they should have tongue straps
and more importantly
- they should hold their cupsole shape better once they have been skated in a lot and are close to death -- the Etnies Marana, even at the stage of "close to death", even once the soles have been worn through, still maintains the cupsole stability. In contrast, the Cariuma Vallely loses it's shape and it feels more like a (exaggeration) bag with a shoe string.
When squeezed, the Cariuma shoe will yield much more than the Etnies Marana.
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While vegan Mike V shoes on Cariuma may soon be a thing of the past ... just like true skater-owned skate shoes companies ... you can still get the vegan colourways of the Mike Vallely shoe and you may be able to find them on sale.
Some impressions:
I haven't skated them but these may just be the best skate shoes ever (?).
- The vegan suede feels nice, not important, but nice.
- So does the rubber cap around the toes. It's natural rubber.
- So does the textile mid-section of the shoes, which is recycled fabric of an undisclosed nature.
- Even the laces feel nice.
- The top of the heel area is surprisingly soft. This might be a good thing for your Achilles heel tendons, especially if they are sore.
- They fit "true to size" in the sense that they fit the same as Etnies, éS (not the Caspian), Emerica, Vans. At least that's my impression. If there is a difference, it's very small. See below.
- The soles are grippy.
- I'll tell you more once I've skated them - which might not be soon because I've got a small stack of shoes.
The colourway I got is called camel.
Comparison of éS (Accel Slim) and Cariuma (Vallely) insoles:
