Casual Shoes Should be Brown

Most of the casual shoes I see are the same boring designs and the wrong color. Leather slip-ons, that is. The vast majority are black penny loafers of one sort or another, and how many black penny loafers should a man be forced to look at over the course of a lifetime?

In the first place, there aren't that many occasions when casual shoes are right. Around the house, of course. Maybe back and forth in the car for lunch. But most shoe professionals tell me that casual shoes are really not constructed for a day of walking or standing. And my feet agree.

That's quite a change from my youth. Raised on Weejuns, I doubt if I owned any laced shoes until years after I entered the work force. For dress I had cordovan leather Alden penny loafers and tassels, in brown and burgundy. I still wear the penny loafers perhaps a day a month. But 90% of my shoes are laced, and have been for years.


Driven by the need to slip shoes off and on at airport security, earlier this year I set out to find some not-penny-loafer styles that I could wear with odd jackets. I settled on two models from Edward Green. The first, an earlier version of the the Bamford pictured at the top of the essay, is a burnt pine slip-on with a toe medallion (the photo is from Sky Valet). The other, the Telford, is a butterfly model with some light brogueing (the photo is not actually a Telford but G. J. Cleverley's crossover band casuals.) I ordered mine in tan, from Tom at Leather Soul.

And that leads me back to the topic of casual shoe colors. It's my belief that casual shoes should usually be brown or burgundy. This stems from an interpretation of the old London rules that makes sense to me:

- Casual shoes are worn with odd jackets, or no jackets at all.
- Odd jackets are worn outside the city during the day, where and when brown shoes are worn.
- Hence, most casuals should be brown.

The exceptions to this way of thinking would be for entertaining at home in the evening (though that's a great time to wear slippers), or for the rare occasion when a more formal black casual is worn with a suit in the city. But the latter should usually be elastic sided slip-ons which are essentially laced shoes without laces.

Casual shoes should be brown. Add style points for suede.

Reader Questions

From James

"I just bought a pair of very, very nice suede Italian slip ons and wonder whether it will be ok to wear them with a suit in September. I will be in Florida. Also do you know where i can order a couple of pairs of authentic silk socks?"

You couldn't choose a better venue for your shoes than Florida in September. Even HRH the Prince of Wales has been known to wear slip-ons with a suit in summer, and September means you can safely ignore those who claim that you should only wear suede this season or that, or who think that different colors are more appropriate in summer. It's all good.

I can't recommend silk socks for day wear as they tend to fall down unless you're wearing sock suspenders. High quality cotton is better, and there's a wider variety of patterns available. But if you must have silk, CustomShirt1 and Woods of Shropshire both carry a couple choices in high quality silk Pantherella socks.

From Krishan

"Thank you for the interesting and educational articles, and for the time you've taken to assemble the Visiting Artisans Calendar.

I was thinking of making some appointments with Huntsman and/or Anderson & Sheppard for their upcoming visits but am new to the bespoke process.

And for shoes it is between GJ Cleverley and Foster & Sons.

I am sure they are all very good, I was just wondering if you might have some tips and suggestions beyond those in your posts.

Plus I was hoping to get your thought on the production timeframes, what to expect from each producer, etc..."

The shoe part of your question is relatively easy. For bespoke shoes you're typically measured on the first visit, and fit on the second. The shoes are completed and shipped to you, and the maker has you wear them for a while. You bring them in to have them looked at on the third visit, and if all has gone well the maker will take another order from you at that point if you're so inclined.

Each shoemaker will provide any of the classic styles, but if you have your heart set on something unique to one of them you should get it from that maker as the others will be reluctant to copy it. Cleverley and Foster are both very high quality and, unless you get to London periodically and can continue the process there at your convenience, an important criteria should be the regularity of their visits. One that visits semi-annually is going to require nine months to a year for the initial delivery and as much as 18 months before signing off on the first pair.

Before choosing a tailor, you need to choose a silhouette. The two you've mentioned produce clothes that are about as different from each other as you can get on the Row. A&S makes a relatively unstructured jacket (the suits that I'm wearing on my web site are from A&S) that's popular with American customers. Huntsman, on the other hand, makes a very structured coat. You may also want to consider Poole, whose style is a bit more flexible than the other two and whose jackets fall somewhere in the middle. All three are good, but you should first decide what you think you want to look like and let that drive your choice.

If you don't get to London with any frequency, once you choose your silhouette (and that may require you to visit each of the candidates this time around before you make a selection), your next criteria should be the frequency of their visits. Your first suit will usually take one visit for measurement and two for fittings (usually only one fitting is required after the first suit, but sometimes it takes more).

A tailor like A&S who visits once a year is going to take longer to deliver completed suits unless you can meet them in another city during the year. I prefer men who visit two or three times, and I get to London for intermediate fittings in addition. The more frequency the better, in my opinion.

Always Correct - G. J. Cleverley & Co.

The not-quite fifty year old firm of G.J. Cleverley & Co Ltd is "Savile Row's preferred bespoke shoemaker" according to the Savile Row Bespoke Association.



Founder George Cleverley joined Tuczek, a high society London shoemaker, after the first World War and remained there until 1958, managing the shop for much of that time. He began his own business shortly after leaving Tuckzek where he continued making some of the world's finest shoes until he died in 1991.The current partners, George Glasgow and John Carnera, worked with Cleverley for more than a decade and have maintained his high standard. I met with George Glasgow during his recent visit to San Francisco, part of the firm's month-long tour of the United States.

G. J. Cleverley makes 7-10 handmade pair of shoes each week as it has for many years. The shoes are made much as they were a century ago and to much the same acclaim. Just a few years ago, the U. S. magazine Robb Report rated the firm as the best shoemakers in the world for five years running.

I've been a Cleverley bespoke customer a couple of times over the years, and was interested to see the firm's samples, which had more of an emphasis on exotic leathers than I had noticed in the past. Glasgow said that the United States is Cleverley's most important market and the exotics are well received here. A Cleverley customer kindly allowed me to photograph the shoes he was wearing, a spectacular red-toned pair of Adelaide brogues made from the famous pre-1800 Russian Calf.

While I was looking at a pair of crocodile oxfords, another customer dropped off two pair of crocodile slip-ons for re-furbishing. Many of the shoes have the distinctive Cleverley shape, a chiseled toe that can be seen on well shod men in major cities around the world.


Cleverley's bespoke shoes are priced from about £1500 (the crocodile, sadly, are roughly double that amount). I'm dreaming of a pair of stitched toe oxfords, in black buckskin.

Edward Green Top Drawer

Hilary Freeman (the lady in the photo), Managing Director of shoemaker Edward Green, is currently on a trunk show tour of America. She has a sample of the new Top Drawer model with her and I was able to examine it last week.

Top Drawer models feature a hand shaped fiddleback waist, the buyer's initials on the sole by the heel, a built-up not-quite-Cuban style heel, a spade shaped sole edge, and a handwritten sock with the buyer's name. They receive special attention during polishing and are shipped with specially shaped shoe trees. At least on the sample I saw, the stitching around the sole is very well done.

Top Drawer orders are clicked and closed like regular Edward Green shoes and then lasted by a team of four craftsman who each specialize in one part of the shoe. The result looks every bit as good as my bespoke Cleverleys.

The pricing, which in the United States will be roughly $1600 through EG distribution and $1900 through Polo, is comparable to John Lobb Prestige. That's a stiff premium over Gaziano & Girling's ready to wear, however I believe the G&Gs will go up rapidly in price once they are actually delivering shoes. Top Drawer shoes are finished better than Lobb Prestige, though Lobb's models are exclusive to the Prestige line. That's an advantage on the Lobb side of the fence.

Japan is EG's most important market and the price is likely to find less resistance there than it will in the U.S. Further, Hilary told me that if you have an Edward Green bespoke last made while Tony Gaziano was working there, EG will make your Top Drawer shoes on that last. She said the same to two friends that went to see her separately.

There are several hundred men for whom that offer will be an outstanding bargain. 80% or better of a fully bespoke shoe at half the price.

The Black Sebiro

Sebiro, after Savile Row, is the Japanese word for suit. In that word is much of the economic future of classic men's clothing.

While marketing deficiences have caused a decline in the number of suits we see on the street in the United States, 125 million Japanese are the world's important opportunity for many quality English and Italian men's clothing makers. As arguably the first Asian country to develop a modern economy, Japan is also very influential. Its every move is watched carefully by its neighbors in Korea, Taiwan, and lately China. And, despite efforts to the contrary, Japanese men wear suits to do business.

In 2005, Environment Minister Yuriko Koike informed his countrymen that Japan could slow global warming by turning down their air conditioners and curbing power consumption. It needed only to ditch the suit in warm weather. Few seem to have followed him.

Journalist Kay Itoi writes that her Tokyo commuter train is still full of dark suits. ""Nobody I know is switching to Cool Biz," shrugs my friend Izumi, a 44-year-old businessman at a software firm. Even Hideaki Tagata, 31, who came up with the catchy "Cool Biz" in a nationwide naming competition, won't doff his tie. "I'll think about it when everybody else does," the sales chief at a Tokyo building-maintenance firm tells me.""

Of course, the suit-wearing tradition did not arrive in Japan without modification. Those dark business suits tend to be black three button models with a high button stance like the one pictured to the left. It's worn with all three buttons buttoned. Fortunately, Japanese dandies have moved well beyond the black sebiro.

I regret that I can't read Japanese to get the full flavor of classic men's clothing there. The country appears to support more bespoke shoemakers than the U.S. and U.K. combined. Magazines like Mens Ex, Men's Club and Leon have more pages of high-end clothing coverage than we see anywhere in the English-speaking world. But even without the language, there are ways to enjoy what men in Japan are wearing.

Buried in Style Forum's Comprehensive List of Links to High-End Shoes thread is a thoroughly enjoyable set of links to Japanese shoe and clothing photography. The text is usually in Japanese but the photos are universal.

In particular, Jun Kuwana's Cobbler's Site has a better collection of photos of bespoke shoes by London's George Cleverley than are on that company's own site. It's got tailored clothing photos as well. I eventually commissioned a jacket from England's Fallan & Harvey after first viewing photos posted there.

Of course, it wasn't black.

Bespoke Switching Costs

Bespoke clothing customers generally have it pretty good. The stuff usually fits, and most of the time will outlive its wearer. The suppliers are low pressure and polite, and ordering another pair of shoes or a batch of shirts is as easy as sending an email describing what you want. Several months later, your order arrives without further ado. But life is not all cashmere and vicuna.

There's an old saying that a bank will only lend you money when you don't need it. The corollary to that is that you should only begin a relationship with a new bespoke clothing artisan when you don't need new clothes.

Beginning a new relationship with an artisan feels like you're living life in slow motion, particularly if you don't get to the artisan's home city and have to wait for a semi-annual visit to see progress. For example, it was two years from the time I placed my first bespoke shoe order with George Cleverley & Co. until they would accept my order for a second pair. After measurement and payment of my deposit, they made my last. Then we had a fitting for the shoes, some adjustments, another fitting, and a few more adjustments before the shoes were delivered more than a year after the order. And then they had me wear the shoes for another six months to ensure that the fit was right.

Now, I'm not complaining about Cleverley. They get it right, and an order placed today takes only a couple of months. But if I then want a pair of shoes from, for example, Tony Gaziano (whose black bluchers are pictured to the left), the process starts all over.

Tailored clothing is the worst. It's prudent to begin a relationship with a new tailor with a single suit. Tailors being only human, it's rare that the first suit approaches perfection - usually it's OK, the second one is fine and the third is about good as you're ever going to get from that source.

In addition, most tailors visit my city twice a year. So unless I get to their home city in between their visits, the basted fitting occurs in six months and the second fitting in a year. If the suit is perfect, the buttonholes can be cut and the garment sent to its new owner, but more often than not it takes another fitting. Eighteen months from start to finish and only then can you order more clothes.

Despite the obstacles, circumstances caused me to venture into the unknown twice this year. After the professional demise of one tailor, I sought out Peter Harvey of Fallan & Harvey and commissioned a tan fresco odd jacket for summer with gold metal buttons. Peter makes a middle of the road coat with a higher button point that will be a new experience for me.

I also finally met with Thomas Mahon on his visit last month, and he has started a double breasted suit in a ten ounce mohair and wool blend. Thomas's style is the classic 1930's soft and unstructured drape, which I prefer.

I'm hoping I can enjoy long relationships with both men because it's a lot of trouble to switch.