Designers of luxury footwear, look away now. That’s right, just look over your shoulder and move on. Vendors of fine leather loafers and bench-made brogues, please turn off your phones. There is nothing to see here. Nothing at all. Really.
Why? Well, because of my terrible confession, that’s why. It’s not life-threatening, but I’m not proud of the fact. The thing is, whenever I take possession of a new pair of shoes – and I really, really like shoes – I tend to wear them to death. Literally. Like, this isn’t even a joke (as entry-level humans might say). So, when I take ownership of a new pair of Oxfords, Derbys, monks, Chelsea boots, loafers, chukkas, trainers, even slippers, I will literally wear them until they start to fall apart, until they have deep fifty-pence-sized holes in the soles and until the laces start looking as though my one-year-old Maltipoo has just spent 20 minutes with them. I wear them until the shank is all but eroded, until the welt stitching has come undone, until the toes are scuffed and until the eyelets look bloodshot.
With shoes, like clothes, I’m all or nothing. In fact, with anything I’m all or nothing. Music, books, films, catchphrases, furniture, postcodes. I go in deep, swim around in concentric circles until I’m bored, and then I’m out. For good. In. Out. Shaking it all about and then moving on. With a vengeance.
That’s right, I’m your basic ADT sartorial nightmare.
And because I’ve started to notice that I wear shoes long after I ought to – by which I mean they often start to look as though I stole them from a dustbin – I’ve begun to think that I need a completely new attitude to the shoes I wear during the day, to the shoes I tend to wear to work, to the shoes that people actually see.
That’s right. Patents. I think I’m going to start to wear patents to work. I mean, women do it, so why shouldn’t we? Women wear patent leather shoes, they wear patent leather ankle boots, and some have even been known to wear patent leather knee-high boots, so why shouldn’t we follow suit? Sure, I know that protocol demands that we only wear them at night, after dark, with evening dress, when we’re going out to an awards ceremony to “narrowly miss out” on winning a gong, but this wasn’t always the case, trust me.
Back in the mid-Eighties, wearing patent leather shoes during the day very much became a thing for men, spearheaded by the likes of i-D and The Face and then amplified by the band King. Now, you might not be aware of King, and it’s fair to say that even in the mid-Eighties their customer base was what you might delicately call “specific” (they tried to join the hallowed lands occupied by Queen and Prince, before moving down the mountain onto the flatlands to spend more time with Princess), but one of the positive things they did was popularise the idea of putting on your patents when you got out of bed in the morning, rather than just sporting them for the evening. King’s entire wardrobe was very particular and was so “directional” (he wrote, carefully) – tartan suits, spiky Ziggy Stardust-style hair, patent leather Doc Martens – that I think it might be due for something of a revival. There are certainly a couple of members of the GQ team who would be brave enough to take this on, although at the very least I think they ought to experiment with wearing patents to work.
I’ve tried it a couple of times this year and I think I may have got away with it. Yes, I’m sure there were more than a few members of staff who assumed I had simply got dressed in the dark, or that I had made some terrible mistake when looking under the chaise longue for something to wear in the morning, but I don’t consider either accusation anything to seriously worry about. After all, laughing at people’s shoes is not a dignified occupation – even though some of those who work in the fashion department think of this as a career goal.
So next year I’m going to be doing this a lot more. In fact, maybe I’ll start to do it every day. And maybe – just maybe – I’ll start acting in a counterintuitive fashion and begin wearing my Lanvin sneakers with my velvet smoking jacket or my Ralph Lauren evening suit. Maybe I’ll even try slippers? It worked for Jack Nicholson, and Julian Schnabel, and nobody laughed at them.
Seriously, does wearing patent leather shoes before lunch make me a bad person? Does it? Does it really? Damn. That’s a real problem, because I’m going to do it anyway.
Read more:
The History of Cool: Balenciaga ‘Triple S’ Trainers
What a GQ Editor might say having just been interrupted by Kurupt FM
