Dress Shoes with Orthotics

[numberwizard]

I've searched high and low, but I haven't been able to find a good solution for this.

I'm looking for a pair of dress shoes with leather soles. My problem is that I normally wear a pair of orthotic insoles in my shoe. They're half-length insoles, so I've toyed with the idea of just trying to wear them inside a normal dress shoe, but I haven't yet. I'd be interested to hear if anyone does this.

Of the few dress shoes that I've been able to find that have removable insoles (like AE's LAX derby shoe), they all seem to come with rubber soles. I believe that at least in AE's case, they can resole them with leather, but that looks like it'd take 4 to 6 weeks and tack on $150 to the price of the shoe.

Is something like that my only option? Does anyone out there wear dress shoes but need orthotics? I'd love to hear your advice.

I have a pair of AE's right now that I love, but I can't dance in them for too long because of my feet. I'm also not opposed to paying a bit more for a nicer shoe, as long as it's comfortable enough for me to dance in for hours at a time.

 

[caktaylor]

I think the best course of action would to take your orthotics with you to the shoe store and try on the shoes with the orthotics in them. My experience has been that I need a half size larger with my orthotics than I would otherwise wear. (Except for the AE traveler shoes, those already take the size of the orthotics into account, so I use my normal size.) Unfortunately, I do not have any specific suggestions for brands/models of leather soled dress shoes designed for orthotics. All of mine have man-made soles.