Made In The USA: Hanks Belts, Bonus Vegan Content Too

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As the lizards, the looters, the free-market conservatives, and the corporate-endorsed liberals combine and continue to forcibly push the United States of America back down the ladder of complexity in domestic manufacturing, we find ourselves spotlighting American-made products in the categories once reserved for charming but imperfect local specialties made by primitives and purchased on a vacation lark by the Pan Am jet set in 1970: jewelry, sandals, socks, belts. These are products that can be made in small batches without the sort of massive capital expenditure we currently reserve for app development, Netflix shows about deviant sex, and facilitating vote-by-mail. Which is not to say they’re not important. A country that can make its own belts might eventually make its own fan belts, and from there it’s just a short step to the smartphone.

All blackpilling aside, belts and socks are two categories where there’s really no excuse to buy from overseas, because there are dozens of legitimate domestic suppliers. As you might expect of someone with a few hundred pairs of shoes, I have a lot of USA-made belts. Most of them are fairly dressy, and fairly expensive. In particular, I really dig it when Nick Horween (yes, that Horween) knocks out his one-piece cordovan belts. Doesn’t happen often — the product page is here — but it’s worth keeping an eye out.

Of course, those belts are also $425 each — or they were, back in 2017 — so you’d need to be a bit bloody-minded to wear one for non-special occasions. No worries. That’s why Hank’s Belts exists.

There are companies that make a good handmade product, and there are companies that understand social media, and there are companies that have mastered fulfillment. Hank’s is all of the above. Ordered the wrong size? They’ll literally have you swapped out and wearing the right one in three days or less. The ordering process is as simple as possible. There’s usually a 20% discount available on social media, but I’ll save you the trouble and put one at the end of the article. (I have no affiliate relationship with Hank’s, and don’t get paid on this.)

I bought the Everyday Belt in 1.5” width, and the Dakota Belt in 1.25”. There’s no excuse for me owning the bison-hide Dakota — it’s ranching cosplay of the worst sort — but it’s beautifully finished and stands in the same sort of relation to the $500-and-up handmade Tom Taylor southwest belts that a steel Tudor Black Bay does to a gold Rolex Submariner. I’m going to wear it on my next visit to Savile Row, just to see what they say. Closer to home, I think you could enjoy it in the current “casual work” environment, it’s fine with a set of jeans and anything from Alden cordovan wingtips to New Balance 990v6 sneakers.

The Everyday Belt, on the other hand — I wore it yesterday on a 910-mile trip to pick up a race car. Today I’m wearing it while I load tires and fuel for the weekend. It’s hilariously overbuilt, like a Ruger Super Redhawk revolver. The leather is thick and stout. It’s not a “gun belt”, and Hank’s will sell you something even more heavy-duty for that purpose, but it would easily support something like a Glock 21 on a holster. (If you hate guns, think of it as being able to support a Vaughan California Framer, the original “assault hammer”.)

Hanks offers a “100 year guarantee” and I can easily see the Everyday living up to that. If you need a belt that will last a long time, visit their site and use code FALL24.

There’s just one small problem with all the Hanks Belts: they’re leather. Which doesn’t suit everyone’s ethics. Back in 2011, I bought a vegan belt from Couch, the people who make those great MB-Tex guitar straps. Spoiler alert: it didn’t last 100 years. I wore it every day during my job at Honda. By the end of that 18 months (I think) it had several cracks on both edges that were propagating rapidly. I paid $19.95 for it, so to get 400-plus wearings out of it was a fair value in my opinion.

The newer offerings from Couch are different. The old Vegan Couch Belt was reclaimed deadstock from who knows where. Now they’re using new-production Biothane, which is an Ohio-made coated webbing intended to outlast leather or traditional vinyl. I’ll probably order one just to see how it holds up. I’ve been very satisfied with the thirty or so Couch straps I currently own. My son used one of the MB-Tex belts for a “rock camp” last month. During their end-of-camp performance, he and his bass jumped off the drum riser — he gets this from his Uncle Bark, who used to do something similar, I think. It gave the straplocks a solid bend but didn’t hurt the strap. So I’d expect good things from the Couch Biothane belts.

Either of these options should take care of your belt needs for a while, but you should still check in with Nick Horween about that one-piece cordovan belt. Few things in life are nicer. It will make you feel like part of the Pan-Am jet set, circa 1970. And who doesn’t want that?