Most men assume that getting a good pair of calf boots means spending serious money, and for a long time that assumption was largely correct. The gap between a boot that looks the part and one that actually holds up, in the leather, the welt construction, the quality of the sole, used to kick in around a price point that gave most people pause. That gap has closed considerably. We’ve been paying close attention to what’s available at the more accessible end of the market and some of it is genuinely impressive. The ones we’ve picked here share a few things: a last with real shape to it, leather that will take a polish rather than resist one, and a silhouette that works with tailoring as comfortably as it does with dark denim. None of them look like budget boots. Some of them look like boots costing twice the price. That is the whole point of this edit.