Shoes (paging Frank Ridgeway)

No easy answer to this, depends what you like and what you want them for.

A lot of the old brands have declined in quality. Florsheim, Bostonian, Cole-Haan and all but the most expensive Johnston & Muphys have gone offshore and the quality has suffered. The old reasonably priced made-in-Maine shoes -- Bass, Dexter, Sebago -- have gone offshore as well. That's a personal bias, wanting stuff made in the U.S., because there are great shoes made in Italy if you like them, but most of the aforementioned brands have gone to inferior leather as well.

The difference in leather is full-grain leather vs. corrected-grain leather. With corrected grain, they take an inferior hide, sand it and give it a plastic-looking finish. You scuff them, they're not as fixable as the more expensive full-grain. The initial cost is less, but you will have to replace them more often.

Go to a shoe store and take a pair of, say, Bostonian dress shoes and hold them up to a pair of Allen-Edmonds. You'll see the difference; it doesn't take an expert to see. The Bostonian will be shinier, but it's an unnatural-looking shiny.

Not that Bostonian is an awful shoe. I got married in a pair of them before I knew any better, and they sit in my closet, unused for about four years since I acquired better footwear.

You can buy the best shoes in the world and they aren't going to last very long if you wear them every day. Feet produce something like a quarter-cup of perspiration per day, and they need a day to recover or they will literally rot on your feet. After I bought some Allen-Edmonds, my wife was so impressed with them that she went on eBay and bought a pair as a Christmas gift for her brother-in-law. He liked them, too, and wore them every day despite my advice (they "were too comfortable not to wear," he said), so of course the shoes with a full-retail value of about $300 lasted him about a year, whereas my shoes will probably outlive me and wind up in a thrift store somewhere after I croak. If you are going to invest in good shoes and need to wear them five days a week, you are going to need at least two pair or it's pointless. Might as well buy crap if you're going to abuse them.

Some of the pricier rubber-soled shoes can be resoled, but just about all the leather-soled shoes can be, and that's cheaper than a new pair as long as you haven't abused the uppers.

It's amazing how some people treat their shoes. I certainly advise trying them on and I am not usually an advocate of buying them used ... however. About a year ago I was in a thrift shop and saw a pair of Allen-Edmonds brown captoes with almost no wear on the bottoms and the inside, but the uppers looked dry and dusty. These are $300 shoes and obviously the dumb fuck who owned them had never heard of shoe polish (shoe cream is even better) and dumped them after they didn't look new anymore. For $5 they seemed worth the gamble, so I took them home and they sucked in shoe cream like a bum with a bottle of Boone's Farm. They were just thirsty. They look great now and they have a loving home.

If I didn't want to spend a lot (and you like loafers), I'd probably go with the Bass Weejuns. Except for the brown ones, they are corrected grain, but the construction is decent and they have leather soles. I'm still wearing a pair I bought 20 years ago (they were made in Maine at the time).

Allen-Edmonds sometimes can be found cheap (like $100) at Marshall's or other such discount stores, or on sierratradingpost.com, which has a good return policy. I've never paid more than $90 for A-E, and the hell of it is that I paid more than that for the Bostonians I wore at my wedding because I didn't know what I was doing.

 

Nicely done.

Excellent shoe advice, Mr. Ridgeway.

 

Frank is, as always, bang on.

I'd add a couple of things.

If you have a good pair of leather shoes, buy cedar shoe trees. They help absorb the moisture that Frank was talking about and help maintain their shape.

Also, use a shoe horn to put on shoes. Don't jam your foot into them or you'll break down the backs.

And clean and polish them regularly.

I'm a big Bass Weejun fan but I can't find the damn things up here anymore.

 

Frank, thanks again. You know your stuff.