Shoe Of The Day

How often do you see green shoes? Not very often!! And that's what I love about Paul Smith, the creator of these shoes. He is constantly coming up with unique and colorful shoes to add to his collections and while he may use a fairly common brogue like this as his staple style, what's great is that he will change it in so many ways from the color, to the leather and even the texture, for example, velour. A shoe like this can add so many more possibilities to your wardrobe and I am glad that there is someone like Paul Smith, who is so big in the shoe industry, coming up with these concoctions to continually provide us with lively options!

Shoes Of The Day

All I have to say is Edward Green, WOW, and I am envious of the guy that owns these!!

The Most Versatile Shoe - The Brown Full-Brogue

In a man's wardrobe, there are no pants (used for day wear) that a pair of brown full-brogues cannot compliment. You can pair them with jeans, khakis, trousers and even your suits. Not only can you wear them with all these different types of pants you can also pair them with literally every color of pant, except black. Think about all of the possibilities you can put together! Talk about a bang for you buck, right!!? It's the one-stop-shop type of shoe. However, the question is: why don't more men own a pair? Probably because in most people's limited minds, they think that black is the most versatile color and maybe that was true back in the 50's when people only wore black, gray and navy suits. But it's the 21st century and it's no longer stylish to be super conservative and only wear black shoes with navy suits, to wear old man tassel loafers and not have a brown shoe in your collection. On the contrary, IT IS ESSENTIAL to own a brown dress shoe or you have no idea of what you are doing when it comes to dressing yourself!!!









Top Pair: Gaziano & Girling
Left Pair: Edward Green, Photo Courtesy Of: Leffot
Right Pair: Edward Green, Photo Courtesy Of: Leather Soul

Like I have stated before, something about the brogueing gives it a very different feeling to the average dress shoe, a much more casual feeling. Not in the sense that it's too casual to be dressed-up with a suit but more the feeling that it's a beautiful dress shoe that can easily compliment the right pair of jeans or casual khaki type pants. The art of wearing a nice pair of dress shoes with your casual attire is not easy and many times people can take it too far and look like they are trying too hard or just wear a pair of pants and dress shoes that would not go well together to save their life. So what's nice about the brown full-brogue is how much more easier it is create that transition from dress to casual.




















I have posted some pictures for you so that you can see what you can pair brown full brogues with and how simple it is. My shoes are by Paul Smith and the model is called 'Starr.' While mine are a style with a slightly thinner sole, I definitely prefer something a little bit thicker, like the two above by Edward Green. A thicker sole still allows you to dress it up but just makes it even easier to dress it down. From the pictures you can see that it is very easy to wear brown shoes, let alone brogues. They compliment most colors as well as offer great contrast when you play with various shades of brown. A good example of that would be the lighter colored Edward Green shoe, above, paired with a navy suit. The contrast between those two colors will definitely spice up your outfit and have you stand out from the crowd.




















I know I always say that if you don't own such and such then you should definitely get it but if you really don't own a brown brogue, preferably full-brogue, then your wardrobe is seriously lacking on a practical scale. It's like dress clothes purchasing 101: 1. Brown brogues; 2. Black shoes; 3. Navy suit; 4. Gray suit and 5. Black suit. Those alone create an infinite amount of outfits and looks!!!

Shoe Of The Day

This is a beautiful bespoke shoe by Gaziano & Girling that literally represents quality and elegance at it's finest. While I am quite bias towards this shoe, due to my admiration of the fleur de lys symbol, it's beauty still remains quite evident. The shine is one of the best that I have seen. It appears to almost have a mirror like quality and while all bespoke shoes, unless otherwise specified, have a very high shine finish to them, this one in particular stands apart. The coloring is nothing short of amazing and the distinct shape and curvature of the last is also very appealing. I always admire a beautifully made shoe and this one here definitely goes down in the books as a favorite!!

Shoe Of The Day

In case you didn't realize, the sneaker industry is boomin' and is only about to get bigger! Part of that boomin' industry is the young and successful Clae, which is the brand that created this shoe. While this shoe, called the 'Bruce,' comes in several other colors I chose to show the teal colored version just to stress my observation of teal being the color of 2010 in the casual/sneaker shoe industry. Even Sperry has a shoe like this in a similar color. I love the shoe's design: simple, classic with a twist and easy to put on. It doesn't get much better than that and hoping that this shoe stays in the collection, I definitely plan to add it to my wardrobe in the not-so-distant future!! GET ON BOARD WITH TEAL!!!!

Shoe Of The Day

These are brand new Edward Green shoes that just arrived at Leffot in NYC. I just saw his new post on these shoes and I was inspired!! You really don't often see these two colors put together in the same shoe let alone the same outfit and yet these came out beautifully. It just goes to show what some people may think cannot be done, in actuality, can very much be done and done quite well!!! There are very few things in the shoe world more intriguing than a nice pair of two-tones and this pair above validates this statement!!

Gray Shoes - The New Black

Over the past couple of years you might have noticed the uprising of gray dress shoes being introduced by many of the well known Italian fashion labels such as Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo etc as well as some of the other more 'racy' labels from other countries like Paul Smith from England and Magnanni from Spain. While many colors are introduced into a line to be a taste of something different, I feel like gray has become a reoccurring statement through each season as a color that could be in substitute for the commonly used black. And why would it not?









Top Shoes: Aldo Brue
Left Shoe: Magnanni
Right Shoe: Edward Green

Gray is a color that has been used throughout all of fashion's history as a staple color in the wardrobe but has just recently made it's way into the likes of the shoe world. I really can't understand why it took so long. It is not a bright nor racy color, on the contrary it is quite conservative and could easily be used to substitute brown and black shoes considering that there is not much that a gray shoe would not work with. It is such a neutral color that it's contrast against pretty much all other colors, that you find suits in, would provide a nice balance to the look of your outfit. To give examples of how to pair gray shoes with several outfits I have added some pictures below.



















Although it is hard to see the contrast due to my lack of photography skills and not knowing how to properly use a sophisticated camera you can get the idea of how easily it is to substitute a black or brown shoe with that of a gray one. Hopefully you can see that on the left side I paired it with a black suit and on the right side with a navy suit. The only downside to getting gray shoes is finding a nice belt to match them. That, unfortunately, is something that has not caught on yet. You would think that makers would want to make belts to match their unique colored shoes or that department stores buyers would have better communication with each other to make sure that if the shoe department was buying a certain color shoe for the season than the furnishings department would follow suit and get a belt to compliment the shoes. But apparently this simple communication is too hard to ask for.













So above are the shoes that I was wearing, as you can see they are more of a dark gray which made it hard to see the contrast between them and my black and navy suits. For those wondering, they are a model by Ferragamo that is about 3 years old now. Whats also nice about this particular model is the fact that because it is a slip-on it's much easier to also pair with a simple, casual outfit which I also posted below for you to see just how easy it is.



















This outfit is really as basic as it gets and they still go great together. Many people only think that dress style shoes can only be worn for dress type clothing but I think if paired right, a dress shoe can look very sharp with casual clothes. Like I always say, if you don't own a gray shoe than you should be thinking about getting one to compliment your wardrobe. You see here how simple it is to add to your existing wardrobe so you would not even need to get anything else to go with them!