MC General Chat - Page 67

Who puts cuff links on a shoe?

 

My mom really hates tassel loafers, but she doesn't post on here. I think of them as filling almost the same niche as dubmonks -- that wide middle range of formality. Maybe the tons of love for monks steals away the attention?

 

I'd wear the right pair of tassels a hell of a lot. I have a pair of black ones that I wear because my service industry job requires me to wear black shoes, and a pair of super tacky moc croc  Florsheims that lost a tassel at some point. A really classic pair would be great.

Which ones are those, D? I'm a fan, and have been looking to fill that very gap in my shoe line up.

Let me rephrase that...

Kind of like cufflinks on a shirt?

Cuff links hold a cuff closed. That style of cuff doesn't exactly work without them. Little dongles on a shoe? Not so much.

Yeah, why don't we all just wear onesies and have done with it.

Also, I've always assumed that the tassels did serve some sort of purpose once upon a time - they are connected to the strip of leather that runs round the bottom of your ankle, which once you would have pulled on to tighten, like a lace (you get the same thing - still functional - on boat shoes). At some point the laces gained tassels on their ends, because, you know, life's too short not to have tassels - or maybe they were to stop the knot slipping or undoing, or to stop the lace ends from fraying?. Those "string" loafers from Carmina that the Armoury sell I imagine as a bit of a throw back to an earlier stage in the tassel loafer's evolution.

Sometimes you see otherwise normally-laced derbies with tiny little tassels on the ends of the laces too (not my cup of tea personally), and they are also de riguer with traditional ghillies under you kilt (if you've ever worn a kilt, you may well ask what is the point of trousers?)

From leffot -

I don't have a problem with tassels done well. They are an affectation, true, but so is most of what we do.

Granted, I don't own any tassel loafers, but I definitely don't have anything against them when done well. Spoo does them well (usually... ).

As with ascots and colorful socks, I find tassel loafers much too chichi for normal wear. They sometimes look fine on the extravagant dresser, however: Spoo's pairing above (with the clown pants and bare ankles) being a good example.

Tassels are fun, if you're going for a certain transatlantic type of look. I have a pair of dark brown calf tassels that don't get particularly frequent use, but it's almost always enjoyable use when they do come out to play.

I wore them in the first half of the eighties. In black and navy IIRC. With a "college shawl", polo shirts, cardigans and plaid trousers.