The smug responses are coming from people who own many, many pairs of shoes, purchase new ones often, cycle out old ones frequently and frankly aren't going to be impacted if a given pair is damaged, because there's a closet full of...
Having owned a number of these shoes (AE vs. more expensive brands) and pondered this question post-purchase myself, what I've noticed to be the differences:
1. Finish on the Lobbs, etc., is almost always better. Specifically, leather...
$50-100 is a fair price point for me. Plenty of excellent options in that range, and I've picked up too many good condition, nice pattern ties from Kiton, Ricci, etc. at that price point to believe that I absolutely need to go higher.
Interesting, the leather on my black tramezza captoes has not aged well at all. I don't fault the shoes though, given the amount of winter salt they have seen.
"A Man Shoe"
Wow - fascinating. Thank you for posting.
Most interesting to me were the contortionist clips at the end where the shoes are bent and twisted. Those made me wonder whether the "shoe of tomorrow" tended to have much more...
