Pairing oxford shoes with chinos

[dieworkwear]

I am wondering how dirty your shoes get? Do you play in the mud with them or something?
And do you not have a guest bedroom that doubles as a closet for you?

intereting

I mean, I step on the ground, including in public restrooms. I don't even get into bed with dirty clothes, nevermind dirty shoes.

 

[Leiker]

You guys put dirty shoes on your bed?

Going to bring in a good haul with this one

 

[dieworkwear]

Going to bring in a good haul with this one View attachment 1670665

Reminds me of the time @patrickBOOTH put his dirty ass shoes on his steak, and then took a photo as a flex. Like "here are my expensive shoes and my fancy steak!"

But, like, bro did you just put your dirty ass shoes on your food?

 

[radicaldog]

The ones most want to imitate, the taste-setters, the arguably more influential because greater social/cultural capital - these are a different group.

But who are they, these days? I think the relevant cultural references are really fragmented. The Tories of Bumble still imitate the royal family, others imitate Kanye West, etc.

the inheritors of the tradition to which the CM community looks for inspiration are currently embracing a new maximalism. It is not gauche anymore to wear a hideously expensive coat, or head-to-toe (vintage) designer dress, or fabrics that scream luxury and expense, so long as all are done simply and tastefully - but it is immediately noticeable and noticed, because it is out of reach for most people

I guess I just don't see this, perhaps because, as I said above, I don't know which sorts of people you have in mind. The most stylish and elegant people I can think of today don't have the appearance you describe. I actually can't find online photos of these people--and that's the point--but some shots of some well-known internet fashion people plus designer catalogue shots might stand in a bit:

NB: I stuck to fits I would consider CM. But most of the most stylish people I know rarely wear CM.

What sorts of looks did you have in mind?

 

[ValidusLA]

crockett and Jones does a more chisel toe as well. They don’t have only one last. Cheaney also has more than one last, and does a more rounded toe as the alternative one in that photo.

Which C+J oxford is as wedge toed as your shoe posted above?

The Fairford and James are chiseled, but not wedged, and they are the least rounded.

I can't think of a C+J oxford doing a blunt front like the one you posted.

 

[dieworkwear]

But who are they, these days? I think the relevant cultural references are really fragmented. The Tories of Bumble still imitate the royal family, others imitate Kanye West, etc.



I guess I just don't see this, perhaps because, as I said above, I don't know which sorts of people you have in mind. The most stylish and elegant people I can think of today don't have the appearance you describe. I actually can't find online photos of these people--and that's the point--but some shots of some well-known internet fashion people plus designer catalogue shots might stand in a bit:

View attachment 1670534

View attachment 1670539

View attachment 1670541

View attachment 1670664

View attachment 1670672

NB: I stuck to fits I would consider CM. But most of the most stylish people I know rarely wear CM.

What sorts of looks did you have in mind?

I was flipping through the Vox's guide the other day and struck by how many of the fits included look good, even after so many years. Many of those fits were posted in like 2010. They have aged very well.

I still admire many of the fits that certain members used to post here. I think you will stand out in CM because tailoring is so rare nowadays. But all the outfits are "normie" in comparison to some of the other things people have posted -- the teal shoes with teal t-shirts, cargo pants with green oxfords, the Tom Ford outfits, the unusual shoes, etc.

I don't understand how any of this is 1940s cosplay. It looks incredibly natural to me, at least as "natural" as you can get with CM in 2021. It's just tasteful.

 

[acapaca]

Let's consider these two images:

Apart from an appeal to history, what would be the aesthetic argument for why brown shoes work here but navy would not?

 

[radicaldog]

I don't understand how any of this is 1940s cosplay. It looks incredibly natural to me, at least as "natural" as you can get with CM in 2021. It's just tasteful.

I guess I just don't think that standing out that much is tasteful, even though all of the outfits are correct and very well put together. What is more, the traditional aesthetic that makes those looks tasteful also damns them as less than tasteful when they stand out too much.

But I don't think all of the outfits you posted stand out in a bad way, mind. Mariano Rubinacci, for example, looks great. One sees lots of men his age doing that look in Naples, and he does it particularly well--I'll even allow him that exploded pocket square which looks like an octopus trying to escape from his barchetta pocket. Others would be fine for conservative business/govt settings, or in cities like Milan, where one still sees people in their thirties wearing fairly standard CM.

But then take Foo's outfit. It's perfectly correct and skilfully composed, but it's also cosplay, in the sense that the only reason an American guy his age dresses like that in NYC is that he likes the style of a certain era. You can just tell that there's something phoney or at least theatrical going on there. In fact that same guy a few years later did a u-turn and started cosplaying a Hedi/rocker type. I don't think he looks remotely elegant or tasteful in either style, even though the CM look is more flattering in terms of volumes.

 

[dieworkwear]

Let's consider these two images:

View attachment 1670732

View attachment 1670733

Apart from an appeal to history, what would be the aesthetic argument for why brown shoes work here but navy would not?

There is no other appeal except history. Dress is a form of visual language, not purely artistic expression. One does not combine random colors and shapes to create a pleasing outfit, like you might with an abstract painting. IMO, it's better to think of dress as writing a sentence.

Noam Chomsky, a linguist, once used the phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct, but is meaningless.

It's the same with dress. You can say that blue shoes match blue pants, and this is "correct" in some kind of abstract, artistic expression. But when worn, it just communicates something different: that you are either a dandy or that you don't know how to dress. This is purely because of dress traditions.

 

[radicaldog]

Apart from an appeal to history, what would be the aesthetic argument for why brown shoes work here but navy would not?

Here I have to take DWW's side: the reasons why those looks work are inseparable from their history. The CM visual language is a combination of abstract universal principles (e.g. "combine colours in ways found in nature") and a series of fairly arbitrary but consolidated traditions. If you take one element out of the equation you end up with a confusing, possibly incoherent look.

Edit: I see (posts crossed) DWW takes a more radical view, namely the view that it's conventions all the way down. I think my view has more parsimonious--or anyhow different--premises and yields the same conclusion: you can't ignore history when dressing, especially in CM.

 

[dieworkwear]

Barims and LabelKing, two of the more unusual dressers who have passed through this board, dressed successfully because they had great control over aesthetic language. They knew how to dress in a way that communicates something. In their case, it was a sort of wild 1970s style. It was not just random shapes and colors combined together. If you know about men's dress history, this is a "look."

The other things that have been posted so far:

- The teal shoes with a teal t-shirt and a brown suit
- The green oxfords with green cargo pants and a rugby
- The tan oxfords with fun socks and chinos or jeans
- The grey floral shirt with a country suit and floppy velvet bow tie
- The strange J. Fitzpatrick shoes with suits

So on and so forth ....

These are not "looks." They are just odd. They are random and chaotic. They are not harmonious.

People keep saying that, if I refer to history, I'm promoting some kind of 1940s cosplay. But in the long set of images I posted above, some of those outfits are from 2008 -- 13 years ago -- and they still look great today. They are not "costume play," but quite natural. The other stuff is more "cosplay" than what I'm discussing.

Whether this specific type of dress suits your environment and lifestyle is another matter. If you're a 20-year-old college student, I wouldn't recommend dressing like Vox or Iammatt. It might look affected and strange. But for guys who are over the age of 35, live in cosmopolitan cities, I think the looks above can work for many people. You can adjust on the margins -- lose the tie, or wear a sport coat instead of a suit.

Some people have said, "well if people can dress wildly and create new traditions in 1970, what's to stop us from doing so now?" I have not, nor ever, argued for strict adherence to rules. Again, I've posted photos of Ethan in band t-shirts and suits, and UrbanComp in a black Western shirt and suits. I can't explain to you why Edith Sitwell's poems make sense, but a random combination of words doesn't make a poem. To write a poem, Sitwell at least had to learn the English language first.

 

[acapaca]

There is no other appeal except history. Dress is a form of visual language, not purely artistic expression. One does not combine random colors and shapes to create a pleasing outfit, like you might with an abstract painting. IMO, it's better to think of dress as writing a sentence.

Noam Chomsky, a linguist, once used the phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct, but is meaningless.

It's the same with dress. You can say that blue shoes match blue pants, and this is "correct" in some kind of abstract, artistic expression. But when worn, it just communicates something different: that you are either a dandy or that you don't know how to dress. This is purely because of dress traditions.

Then what was that whole diversion about some sort of v-shaped frame that draws attention to the face and light-colored shoes distracting? Man, you really like to have it both ways.

If your eye doesn't immediately jump to the (sort of mid-) brown shoes in both those pics, then the TV interview must not have been so bad. If it does, then maybe a darker shoe would be in order. There is nothing 'random' about that.

 

[dieworkwear]

Then what was that whole diversion about some sort of v-shaped frame that draws attention to the face and light-colored shoes distracting? Man, you really like to have it both ways.

If your eye doesn't immediately jump to the (sort of mid-) brown shoes in both those pics, then the TV interview must not have been so bad. If it does, then maybe a darker shoe would be in order. There is nothing 'random' about that.

Do you find the brown shoes distracting? They disappear for me because they are so natural, given the history of this style.

When someone wears grey trousers with a blue sport coat, I don't notice the trousers because they are traditional.

If someone wears purple plaid trousers with a blue sport coat, that combination is odd, so I focus on the trousers. This is true even if purple is closer to blue as a color.

 

[thatboyo]

Wild that Vox’s closet room is probably bigger than the studios some of my coworkers live in.

 

[acapaca]

Do you find the brown shoes distracting? They disappear for me because they are so natural, given the history of this style.

You're the one promoting the idea that lighter shoes are distracting. I might not have thought much about it either if you hadn't made such a big fuss about it, compete with diagrams and cognitive theories.