Men's Style The Thinking Man's Guide to Dress

Chapter One SHOES Fashion is only the attempt to realize Art in living forms and social intercourse. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES An experienced society columnist once summed up her whole method of placing people in the social hierarchy by telling me, "It's all in the shoes." Nowhere is your taste and social background so neatly summarized as in your choice of shoe. It is the single most important part of your image, the root from which your projected self grows. Large numbers of single women judge prospective male partners rapidly and solely by looking at their feet. Shoes are the only item of clothing on which you really must spend a great deal of money. It is not really important for the rest of your ensemble. An inexpensive but modishly cut suit can fool tv cameras and fashion journalists alike; an H&M shirt is perfectly hip during its six-month lifespan; a twenty-dollar tie from Wal-Mart is still pure silk. But cheap shoes always look bad. Cheap shoes will also wear out. Good shoes can be resoled almost in'nitely and will obviate shoe-buying for ten years. From a purely ?nancial standpoint, you cannot afford cheap shoes. To know quality you must be aware of technical speci'cations. There is a scene in Don DeLillo's novel Underworld in which a Jesuit intellectual attempts to educate a delinquent pupil by teaching him the names for all the parts of the shoe: sole, heel, lace, tongue, cuff (the strip of leather around the top edge), quarter (the rear sides), counter (the strip of leather over the heel, also called the backstay), welt (the leather base between the upper and the sole), vamp (the front area over the instep), eyelet, grommet (the metal rings that reinforce the eyelets), aglet (the plastic sheath at the end of the lace). And the wooden form that the cobbler makes shoes on is called a last (leading to the old joke about shoemaking: the last comes ?rst). The Jesuit's contention is that "everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge." For our purposes, the point is not only that great literature is obsessed with fashion (something repeatedly demonstrated in these pages), but also that you cannot know a thing until you have words for it. I think that the words welt and sole are the most overlooked "everyday knowledge" in fashion. In the ?rst half of the twentieth century, a ?ne, light shoe was probably Italian-made, and therefore evidence of wealth and sophisticated taste. Many elegant Italian shoes were constructed without a welt that is, with the uppers stitched directly to the leather sole, with no intervening stiffener. Heavily welted English shoes, made for walking in cold climates, were, in the 1950s, the mark of the plodding Anglo-Saxon in a baggy suit; Europeans had trimmer silhouettes and lighter feet. This is no longer the case. Mass-produced footwear has been emulating the narrow, slipper-like Italian style since the seventies. Thin-soled shoes have become indicators of cheap production techniques (most uppers are now glued, rather than stitched, to the welt) and connoters of discount malls and oily moustaches. A thick leather sole and leather welt will give you authority, will cost you more, and will last forever. Soles wear out long before uppers do. One way of ensuring your sole's longevity is to take your new shoes to your cobbler (you have a cobbler, don't you?) the day after you buy them and have him install a thin protective rubber sole over the leather before the original sole wears oSmith, Russell is the author of 'Men's Style The Thinking Man's Guide to Dress', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312361655 and ISBN 0312361653.