Selected GORE-TEX styles for women and men are reduced in the ECCO Black Friday sale: Chelsea boots, ankle boots, sneakers, walking shoes and hiking boots, all with the sealed waterproof membrane inside a leather upper. Every reduced style is marked on its product page and GORE-TEX appears in the product name. These are usually the most sought after styles of the November sale, so filter by your size early and buy on the day you see it in stock.

GORE-TEX is a thin membrane bonded inside a shoe as a sealed bootie. Its pores are far smaller than a water drop, so rain cannot get in, but larger than a molecule of water vapour, so sweat can get out. The result is a shoe that is waterproof and breathable at the same time, which a rubber boot or a sprayed on treatment cannot be. ECCO fits GORE-TEX inside everyday leather styles, Chelsea boots, sneakers and walking shoes, made with leather from ECCO's own tanneries on a light ECCO FLUIDFORM™ sole, so the waterproof pair is also the comfortable pair.

No. GORE-TEX lets sweat vapour out, so a GORE-TEX shoe is cooler than a rubber boot or a sealed synthetic shoe. In a Canadian fall and winter it is the right lining for commuting and walking through rain, snow and slush, and most people wear it from October to April without noticing it. In hot weather a leather shoe without a membrane is cooler, which is why ECCO makes the same styles with and without GORE-TEX. If you run warm, choose a GORE-TEX sneaker or low shoe rather than a boot, and wear wool socks, which move moisture better than cotton.

The membrane is designed to last the life of the shoe. It is bonded inside the upper and does not wash out or wear off the way a spray does, so a GORE-TEX boot bought this Black Friday should stay waterproof for years with basic care. What shortens its life is dirt clogging the pores and leather drying out, so brush off mud, let the shoes dry away from direct heat and feed the leather now and then. ECCO's GORE-TEX styles use leather from ECCO's own tanneries, which is tanned to stay supple through years of wet weather.