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How dark can you go with brown shoes

jgold47

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Here is an idle question. I tend to deal with blacks, charcoals, blues. However, I have developed a fancy for brown shoes. How dark can you wear brown shoes with and not clash? These are darker brown shoes (antiqued look). I want to wear them with a pair of very dark charcoal pants. Is that too dark?
 

JayJay

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Originally Posted by jgold47
Here is an idle question. I tend to deal with blacks, charcoals, blues. However, I have developed a fancy for brown shoes. How dark can you wear brown shoes with and not clash? These are darker brown shoes (antiqued look). I want to wear them with a pair of very dark charcoal pants. Is that too dark?
Charcoal typically is not too dark, but black might be.
 

Gus

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Light tan with very dark charcoal would probably be too much contrast, but a brown with charcoal should go very well. Perhaps you are just not used to it? I was brought up to wear black with everything but earth tones so I always wore black with gray, charcoal, navy. When I started wearing brown and dark tan with those colors it was a little challenging for me at first but I grew to not only like it, but prefer it over black.

Stick with black shoes with black pants however.
 

binatang

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Most shades of mid -dark browns go well with blue, navy & charcoal. Just make sure your shoe shade matches your belt. Usually this is the key.
 

Film Noir Buff

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Although I realize they have a strong lobby, I dont like medium brown calf or suede shoes with dark wool suits.

I like dark brown shoes with dark wool suits.

If the suit is dark but made up of just about any other oft used material, such as cotton, linen, silk, linen-silk etc... then I dont have a problem with shoes that are lighter, including spectators and white suede.
 

jgold47

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Originally Posted by binatang
Most shades of mid -dark browns go well with blue, navy & charcoal. Just make sure your shoe shade matches your belt. Usually this is the key.

how far off can you go between shoes and belt.

It wound up being moot today, I relized that the pants I wanted to wear were a tad too long for the shoes (yes I know I need to get them tailored), and the shirt wound up with a pretty wicked stain on the back. Karma perhaps?
 

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