Earlier this year, Esquire described the trend as the loafer’s “big generational shift,” describing how younger consumers “were bypassing sneakers in growing numbers.” And in January, The Times UK deemed 2026 “the year of the loafer.”...
The surging interest in formal footwear fashions has simultaneously been a boon for both high-end luxury retailers and heritage brands with classic shoe offerings, like Allen Edmonds, the Wisconsin-based retailer. Nick Wooster, the brand’s consulting creative director, said that they have “absolutely” seen a recent increase in interest in their handmade leather loafers and derbies among younger customers.
Even sneaker brands are trying to be more dressy. Brendan Dunne, the senior director of customer community and engagement at the footwear resale site StockX, said that while “we’re definitely seeing a shift” that has brought formal styles back to the office, it’s “a little more nuanced than just consumers giving up sneakers to go after loafers.” In fact, he said, “sneaker brands themselves are absorbing formal aesthetics,” releasing more formal versions of their own hallmark shoes.
I think it's great that people are wearing loafers, but it just seems funny to call that "formal." "Formal" used to mean tuxedos and evening gowns, not daytime business clothes. And traditionally, loafers were below the level of dressiness needed in a professional business setting.
The OED defines "loafers" as "The proprietary name of a shoe for wearing on informal occasions." It quotes the 1972 "Last Whole Earth Catalogue": "The big thing for guys is jeans or slacks, button-down shirts or T-shirts and brown loafers without socks."Doesn't that sound just about exactly like what's still the big thing for guys?
Of course, the word "loafer" also refers to a person "who spends his or her time in idleness." I'm quoting the OED there. I'll just select one historical quote, from 1840, from the famous memoir "Two Years Before the Mast": "The men appeared to be the laziest people upon the face of the earth; and indeed..there are no people to whom the newly invented Yankee word of 'loafer' is more applicable than to the Spanish Americans."
Hmm. I wonder what kind of shoes they wore. If you think they went barefoot, you're wrong. Actually, the author of "Two Years Before the Mast" describes the different shoes in detail. Have you read it? I haven't, but I've done enough research this morning to know that the sailors wore sturdy leather work shoes, and the Spanish Americans wore softer shoes, made of suppler leather.
Of course, the word "loafer" also refers to a person "who spends his or her time in idleness." I'm quoting the OED there. I'll just select one historical quote, from 1840, from the famous memoir "Two Years Before the Mast": "The men appeared to be the laziest people upon the face of the earth; and indeed..there are no people to whom the newly invented Yankee word of 'loafer' is more applicable than to the Spanish Americans."
Hmm. I wonder what kind of shoes they wore. If you think they went barefoot, you're wrong. Actually, the author of "Two Years Before the Mast" describes the different shoes in detail. Have you read it? I haven't, but I've done enough research this morning to know that the sailors wore sturdy leather work shoes, and the Spanish Americans wore softer shoes, made of suppler leather.
Why not wear something like that today? Try wearing something before it emerges as the big thing for guys. It's better to be sort of odd and unafraid of looking ridiculous.
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Black Rockport pro-walkers can double as dress shoes any ol' day
Although, in retirement and in Florida, I'm mostly all about the casual, I absolutely embrace any movement toward less casual, especially but not limited to the workplace. Honestly, to a degree I think you can safely link some other loosening of standards to when the whole business casual trend started coming into play (remember Casual Fridays, from the '80s?).
Athouse's final point is excellent. That would be cool.
Sailors did not stop on a single specific date; rather, the practice of going barefoot faded gradually during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This transition happened as wooden sailing ships were replaced by steel-decked steamships, and as standardized, rubber-soled footwear became common.
Why Sailors Were Barefoot
Better grip: Wet leather shoes slipped easily on damp wooden decks and rigging ropes.
Tactile control: Bare feet and toes let sailors grip lines safely when climbing high masts.
Tough skin: Long-term exposure to weather built thick calluses that protected their feet.
When your blessed with size 14 6E width Alley Oop feet, fashion is the last thing on one's mind.
Typical youth-to-adult fashion cycle: 1. Dress like cartoon "grown ups." 2. Rebel in random ways. 3. Accept some adult styles in a crude fashion, 4. Minimize fashion distractions and conform.
A generation ago this meant young males wore suit jackets with jeans (not blazers or sport coats) and looked half dressed/very weird. They also adopted retro fedoras for a while. Young women started to wear visible bra straps with office dresses, and beach flip-flops instead of shoes. (Now, they have tattoos in visible locations -- so that'll soon be smeary and last for life.)
In some box (moving), I have a copy of that book, Althouse, originally owned by my paternal great-grandfather, who was a seaman (eventually became a captain). He would regale his son (my grandfather) and his grandsons with tales. And he would frequently talk about when he "ran off to sea" to become a cabin boy at around age 14, working barefoot for years. This would have been in the late 1880s or thereabouts.
But later, there was a transition to shoes. I don't have those, but my paternal grandmother, who liked amateur theatricals, kept a prodigious box of "dress-up" clothes that we kids could don for make-believe. Among the shoes were a very old pair that great-grandfather wore on ship. (She also had a couple of pairs of lace-ups, from her own mother and grandmother.)
I don't know what happened to those shoes, but I do have one of his hygiene kits, one of his writing kits, and a partial kit of tools used for mapping and charting. It's like living history! I'm not really sure whether the generations behind me will care, though.
Maybe I should consider finding some museum somewhere that might take them as a donation when I go. Or before.
In the late 60s, we were so painfully preppy in our Gant shirts and Weejuns, with our Gold Cup socks meticulously matched to the shirt color. This, in a working class neighborhood filled with strivers who took their own hard earned teen cash to the best men's stores so you could have that Rosenblum's or Wolf Brothers tag unseen under the back of your neck.
Now, we slop around in the most comfortable thing we can find, straight out of some Chinese sweatshop. They used to measure our sideburns and send you home if they got too long. Now, we all grow Hemingway beards and smile through the whiskers, just like our cats do.
If you see me in a tux now, I'm working, and those are Rockports on my feet. Yes, there's a weapon in my case, and it could go off any minute. (ohnoes!)
Two days ago, we were told that it's burdensome for a female congress member to have more fashion choices than the "uniform" look among men. Today we're told that non-uniform footwear among men is odd and ridiculous.
yah I see the leather boat shoes with the leather laces and white bottoms showing up on the youngsters. They haven't figured out how to tie an eastland knot yet. Give them time…
Wearing "quality" sneakers with a business suit is the contemporary version of the Raised Pinky,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWE-gP7hN0o
I watch the All-In and Moonshot podcasts, which feature quite a few spectacularly wealth tech venture capitalists. The standard uniform is khaki trousers, white shirt and sports coat… and sneakers. This is Elon Musk’s uniform. Even at his corp rollout speeches in front of a big audience.
I believe that Althouse's dad was quite the snappy dresser, and she has said that he looked like Sinatra. I imagine this was an early imprint in her life, in terms of fashion?
I wish we could bring back words like "snappy," "spiffy," "dapper" and "spiffy."
But I suppose we'd need to start dressing like that again... .
That last "spiffy" should have "natty."
My dad used to gig at least three times a week during my childhood years, and often that meant a tux or even tails. (Fun fact: I knew how to correctly iron a tux shirt by 3rd grade; also how to shoe-shine properly.) My mom would always say, "don't you look spiffy" as she kissed him on his way out.
What a wave of nostalgia this post has inspired!
I didn't spend New Year's Eve with my dad until I was in high school. He always had a gig.
Howard said...
Sailors did not stop on a single specific date; rather, the practice of going barefoot faded gradually during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This transition happened as wooden sailing ships were replaced by steel-decked steamships, and as standardized, rubber-soled footwear became common.
My feet don't grip the astroturf when I am doing sled pushes so I need shoes to do that. I wear minimalist shoes with all of the padding torn out. I am going to look for grip socks to replace these shoes.
Why Sailors Were Barefoot
Better grip: Wet leather shoes slipped easily on damp wooden decks and rigging ropes.
Tactile control: Bare feet and toes let sailors grip lines safely when climbing high masts.
Tough skin: Long-term exposure to weather built thick calluses that protected their feet.
It is better for your feet in general to be barefoot most of the time.
The tendons on the bottom of your foot are very important for determining athleticism. People should run barefoot every day.
I didn't realize until I was a teen that most dads didn't own a tux. (How stupid!) But for my dad it was a practical matter and an investment (a uniform). He wore the same on for decades. Luckily, he remained trim. He probably could still have fit in it when I got married in the mid-90s, but that seemed a little over the top, even though we had a Big Band with Girl Singer at the event.
Wearing sneakers with office clothes is the convention for urban commuters. This includes the need for walking, public transit, or light biking to work. Most have office shoes stuck under their desks or in a drawer. It's not fashion per se.
I'm a barefoot gal. I didn't where high heels much, either (I did do low-heeled, of course; you couldn't work corporately if you didn't dress right.) I worry about being told I have to start wearing shoes. But I don't have that the severe foot problems that my maternal grandma, my mom and others had later in life. Part of that is genetic, but it was also the heels (largely ill-fitting).
So I guess I'm more or less with Achilles on this one. But it's just a personal preference.
What a drag show. Formal fluid is fashion forward.
In the end they'll all be in Dockers with a blue long sleeve button down shirt and loafers. Some will even spring for the navy blue sport coat.
Here in south Florida, you need something that won't melt when hitting 130 degree pavement.
Featuring flip flop fungible formal forward fashion. No awkward commas. Abort.
“Try wearing something before it emerges as the big thing for guys.”
…I miss Bill Cunningham too…
Achilles:
For grip socks, you may wish to look at gripjoy.com, Apolla Performance, TRUsox, or American Hospital Supply. The Apolla socks are supposedly made in America; I don't know whether the others are.
"the old soup and fish" - 20th century orchestra talk for these kinds of formal duds.
Q From Lee-Ann Nelson: I am baffled by an expression from P G Wodehouse. Bertie puts on his soup and fish. Can you explain this?
A I can. The soup and fish is a man’s evening dress, dinner suit, or dress suit, though I should really instead refer to it as a tuxedo, since — despite Bertie Wooster’s mainly London milieu — the phrase seems to be natively American.
Until I went delving in old US newspapers, I thought that Wodehouse had invented it. Indeed, the OED gives him the credit for its first use, in Piccadilly Jim in 1918: “He took me to supper at some swell joint where they all had the soup-and-fish on but me. I felt like a dirty deuce in a clean deck.”
https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa-sou2.html
“In the late 60s, we were so painfully preppy in our Gant shirts and Weejuns, with our Gold Cup socks meticulously matched to the shirt color. This, in a working class neighborhood filled with strivers who took their own hard earned teen cash to the best men's stores so you could have that Rosenblum's or Wolf Brothers tag unseen under the back of your neck.”
In college, we had (real) preppies, and everyone else. You could mostly tell them apart from across the Quad. The preppies would be wearing polo shirts (often with collars up), kakis, and often boating shoes - even if their prep school was in CO. The rest if us guys mostly wore jeans (we were in CO, after all).
Next thing you know they'll be modeling Abercrombie and listening to yacht rock. Kids these days.
"Derbies"? I was not aware that John Derbyshire had started a shoe trend, although he does always look spiffy in photos.
Good to know Allen Edmonds is still in business.
Wearing loafers without socks is still crass.
Mezzrow:
I do love me some Wodehouse! You just brightened my morning.
I still have a pair of my Dad's old wing tips, which he stopped wearing as soon as he retired. They fit me, but they are like wearing concrete blocks. Clomp, clomp, clomp.
I watched clips of CNN's Wisconsin primary coverage with smug amusement. The men wore white shirts with loosely knotted ties, business casual pants, and sneakers. They looked stupid. Finally, truth in advertising! GF said they wear sneakers so that they can walk around the studio without making too much noise. Sounds plausible, says I, but what about those TV women and their spike heeled stompers?
Don't like sneakers, never have. I own a few pair, but I seldom wear them for anything not done on my property. I prefer paddock-style boots, a.k.a. elastic-sided boots or Chelsea boots. Easy on, easy off, no laces to come untied, look great. Then there are trail boots for the woods, work boots with steel toes, L.L. Bean Thinsulate snow boots (perfect for that single application, otherwise useless) And my Vogel riders. I have one pair of Keen kayaking sandals made of Kevlar or ballistic nylon -- indestructible and practical for the anything that might involve wet feet. Highly recommended. Hate loafers. Because of the shape of my feet, loafers rapidly become too loose to be worthwhile. I've got wingtip oxfords, black and oxblood)(rarely worn) and a pair of opera pumps in a shoe bag somewhere. Hate those, too. It's bad enough to have a bow tie around your neck, but on your feet??
There was a time when I wore Sperry top-siders. I must have been insane.
Does anyone else remember cleaning patent leather shoes with white vinegar and then, sometimes, using a dab of Vaseline to shine them up?
I did a lot of shoe-shining as a kid. It was a regular chore, usually done on Sundays right after Sunday Dinner, unless there was something else going on.
Do people still regularly shine their shoes, if they have ones that are amenable to that?
Even after my parents stopped going to church, the ritual remained.
“In the end they'll all be in Dockers with a blue long sleeve button down shirt and loafers. Some will even spring for the navy blue sport coat.”
In the 1990s, I was on the AIM (Apple, IBM, Motorola) team that provided the PowerPC RISC processors for Macintosh computers. When the three companies got together, it was always humorous, because you could tell where everyone worked. IBMers were inevitably dressed in blue dress shirts and your dockers. Except for in the summer, when some moved to polo shirts. IBM had swapped out their pin striped suits for Business Casual, and that was what you got. Apple employees were inevitably dressed in collarless shirts. And Moto? We were still in the (typically blue) pin striped suits, white dress shirts, and ties.
Going through my closet early this year, I found over a dozen navy blue blazers. Plus a couple more (one insulated) in our house in MT. Pretty evenly split between gold and black buttons.
Plus over 2 dozen other sport coats, with half dozen raw silk (from Neiman Markus Last chance in PHX) and a half dozen tweed. Plus a dozen and a half suits, mostly conservative dress suits. The only one I can remember wearing over the last decade is a black one for funerals. Esp during COVID. And two tux jackets and four tux pants.
And these days? Levi jeans, and either a polo shirt or button up Oxford dress-like shirt, and sneakers. If we are traveling, a Jean jacket, and if we are going out to somewhere nice, one of those navy blazers.
Bruce Hayden: I like your style(s)!
I was a road warrior in the 1990s (working on enterprise-wide implementations and migrations related to the then-upcoming Y2K issues). There really was a big difference in the way that both various consulting companies and the client companies dressed. The difference in cultures was very apparent, and it really was pretty easy to accurately guess where consultants and employees alike came from, just by looking at the clothes the men wore. Women, not so much, but still mostly dresses, though some trended more to pantsuits and the such.
"Wearing loafers without socks is still crass."
On a yacht it's not! It's stylish. Just like men in shorts!
Glad to see at least some modicum of sartorial tidiness replacing slob culture. Maybe it's coincident with the general tapering off of 'work from home', as office workers are increasingly reigned in. For the outdoor workers, when you're on your feet, RedWings are supreme. I've got some RedWing oxfords that I still wear from the 1990s. Comfortable is an understatement.
1990's - my gay friend J was obsessed with Gucci loafers.
He'd save up to buy them, and then never wear them. They were fabulous.
There was quite the difference between even consulting companies and even their independent contractors. I was a contractor working for IBM. But there were also consultants from, for example, Deloitte and Accenture, etc. Definite differences in some ways (it became less as time went on). And there were big differences in the clients, whether you were talking about, again for example, IBM itself, Lucent Technologies, AT&T, Baxter, Allegiance, etc. etc.
I have zero idea about now.
About 20 years ago in Leesburg Virginia in a restaurant, a very young man came in on Halloween night wearing a business suit, tie, wingtips. I said: "Is that supposed to be scary?" He said: "It's the scariest thing I know." But that mindset seems to be fading.
John Deere was, relatively speaking, a little more formal even well into the aughts, at least at the sites where I worked. Factory floors were different, but pretty much everyone was neat and tidy and wore similar clothes.
“ I did a lot of shoe-shining as a kid. It was a regular chore, usually done on Sundays right after Sunday Dinner, unless there was something else going on.”
“Do people still regularly shine their shoes, if they have ones that are amenable to that?”
My late father was in the Greatest Generation. Which means that he was in the military (Army) during WW II. where they teach shoe shining as a mandatory subject. Decades later, he was still doing it. He was almost robotic. Esp when watching Denver Donkey (Broncos when they go to the Super Bowl) football games. So, enterprising guy that I am, I would sneak a pair of mine in his queue of to-be-polished shoes. Then he caught on, and would polish only one of my shoes. Fixed my wagon.
Flat-soled, preppy Sperry deck shoes are 1,000x more stylish than Crocs. Both are functional for their intended boating purposes.
If I can lose enough weight to fit back into my tux, my kids can eventually bury me in it.
I used to work in the UK at a time when they were still mostly dressing formally, and one guy said to me that he liked to wear a suit to work because then it was plain to everybody, including him, when he was working, and when he wasn't
As for shoe shining, this was a Sunday morning ritual for us, before church, no other time.
A friend of mine has a lime-green polyester leisure suit, which he breaks out for Hallowe'en. He wears the whole 70s kit: white shoes, white belt, rayon shirt with huge collar, gold chain with medallion. I hope it never comes back.
"Flat-soled, preppy Sperry deck shoes"
Every returning sailor from Iran War III: Yacht Party in the Arabian Sea needs a pair. Especially since they, you know, spent time on actual decks.
Men's shoes today (formal or informal) are 1,000% more comfortable than when I was a business road warrior. But women's shoes still appear to be designed to torture them.
They’ve seen an “increase in interest”
Can I see the polling numbers?
"This is Elon Musk’s uniform. Even at his corp rollout speeches in front of a big audience."
Elon's standard wardrobe is jeans, t-shirt and leather or bomber jacket now
I’m wondering about the Dostoyevsky tag, but on a side note, Two Years is a fascinating book—there’s a lot about life on board sailing ships, but to me the most interesting part is about California before the gold rush. A great read.
I hate that I don't dress up for work but it's not really incentivized.
"Two Years Before The Mast" is a wonderful book, you might even find some bloggable material in it. On Kindle for 39 cents.
My husband started his working life at 12 or 13 as a shoe shine boy at a shoe repair shop. The owner trained him to do shoe repairs, including the heavy duty stitching for leather soles, and he was able to use those skills to work all around the US during his tempestuous youth.
Bass Weejuns, $50-75 for decades comes back at $195.
I don't know what anything means any more. A friend's son was invited to a "black tie" wedding. All the women in our circle insisted that "black tie" no longer meant "black tie." All of the men were shocked. Sure enough, when the day came, only a small minority of male guests actually wore formal black tie. Most simply wore dark suits. This is in a fairly well-to-do area just outside of NYC. I really don't understand.
PS. Our friend's son wore proper black tie. He said it was the right choice, so at least there's that.
My father wore a suit and tie to work (NASA) everyday until he had been boss for a few years. Even though he'd change into a flight suit 3 days out of 5.
But then came the rebellion. He bought what can only be described as harlequin pants, threatening to wear them to work. He only ever had the nerve to do that once, and it was a Saturday.
He also had his white flight helmet repainted in metallic flake robins-egg blue. Later he told me he wore it a few times and had it painted white again.
But. After he died I went through his attic, and found a helmet bag. There it was, the metallic flake robins-egg blue helmet.
I still have it.
@Fred Drinkwater -- Today he'd have been taken into HR and started a mandatory gender transition. The family wouldn't have been told.
There are certain clothing items I will never wear. Loafers are one of them.
I also go barefoot as much as possible around home, although here in AZ I hear you're supposed to wear at least flip-flops due to scorpions, but *knock wood* I haven't gotten hit by any yet. I can (and do) walk barefoot outside about 20 ft from the patio to the grill on brick surface, up until about late May or early June; then it's too hot (and rather severe burns are possible).
I wore tuxedos as often as I could. They make the man. I preferred the simple black and white combinations, sometimes with a cummerbund, sometimes with a vest.
The last time I wore proper black tie I was mistaken for the maître d. I suppose I could have collected a few tips.
Enigma, I would have heard about that, for sure. In the form of his musing about alternate targets for his A-4 squadron to practice bombing on instead of the SoCal desert.
As a kid I lived in the country where there were no paved roads or sidewalks. I went barefoot all summer. We played in the fields and along the banks of the reservoir that was just a couple hundred feet behind our property. My callouses got so tough I didn't worry about stickers or thorns much. Once or twice I stepped on a nettle. Owweee. That sucked. The only time I wore shoes was when we went to church on Sundays or to visit my aunts. I still work in my backyard and in my green house with bare feet. I like the connection to the soil.
Sketchers. ya'll know what i'm talkin' about/
I shine the heck out of my baseball officiating shoes
I’m sad to say I’m the only one.
I had to wear suits and ties for the first half of my career. No interest in that now. I wear suits for weddings and funerals and dress pants and dress shirts to church, but I would guess I wear jeans and pullovers just about every other day of the year. Sperry Topsiders and Adidas sneakers (which fit me better than other brands) depending on what I'm doing. One of the rewards of growing older is not having to impress anyone.
There was formal order to formal wear, formerly. Change!
I remember being at a property showing for investors in the mid-nineties and a group of investment banker guys all turned up in polo shirts and khakis. It was a big change from suits and ties.
Is it cis or transformal? Formal differences.
Achilles said: **My feet don't grip the astroturf when I am doing sled pushes so I need shoes to do that. I wear minimalist shoes with all of the padding torn out. I am going to look for grip socks to replace these shoes.**
Vibram Five Fingers work good on AstroTurf, but they're pricey.
"Black Rockport pro-walkers can double as dress shoes any ol' day"
The day I met my wife-to-be I was wearing Rockports in a business casual setting (khakis and a button-down shirt). She later (after we were married) let me know that rubber-soled leather shoes were a deal-breaker for her. She managed to convert me. Almost 30 years later I got some Allen Edmonds dress sneakers and she ridicules them mercilessly. But I'm often the only one wearing leather-soled shoes with business or business casual clothes. I used to think older people could get away with it because they need more comfortable shoes, but I see guys in their 20s and 30s in sneakers with suits.
In my working days my and my wife’s friends thought I slept in a suit and tie. However, I never wore lace up shoes (in high school I wore Florsheim wingtips and plain toed brogues) only loafers - generally Cole Haan penny or buckle instep. This was also the era of the Gucci loafer. I still have a pair of CH penny loafers in my closet that I haven’t worn in probably 25 years.
The decline in standards is shocking. I am old school and almost always put on pants before I comment here at Althouse.
An On topic lol.
Fashion still - but an off topic lol
I used to wear loafers in the office. You could kick them off and let your feet breathe at will, and if you needed to get up you could slip them back on with zero effort. Never mind any fashion aspect.
Good shoes are very very important. So be very careful.
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