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The Lacing of Shoes
Jan. 12th, 2012 12:34 pmRecent thoughts on non-formal footwear. For formal footwear lacing should be traditional. Running shoes and the like should be functional and ergonomic. With informal footwear lacing can be either. Of course, for those who wear shoes that don't require lacing, either I envy you or I despise you, depending on which category's confines you mainly fall within. (For the strictly limited value which it permissible to despise as a consequence of shoe wearing, which is not much as it goes without saying.)
Wellingtons, galoshes, and work-boots are obviously excluded from this as I would have no wish to ever wear them in anger, so to speak, few are laced, and I don't hate the wearers of them, many of whom are bigger than me and inclined to robust physicality.
But to get back to informal footwear lacing….I recently bought a pair of "Desert Boots" (a style of footwear that has nothing to do with the desert, and which can only be called boot because it barely covers the ankle) in navy blue suede, mainly because the eccentric lacing pattern allowed the upper where the laces meet to overlap; and then as if by magic, they fitted. And it got me thinking about lacing. This is obviously trivial stuff to the young cognoscenti who have been lacing their sneakers (to use the American word) in imaginative and functional ways for some years; but to an old fogey like me it has come as revelation. Of world-shaking import, no doubt. I predict a small beak-out of asymmetrical lacing in Jermyn St, the Burlington Arcade, and maybe even the dizzying heights of St James'. I would be amused to see Lobb doing something like that.
O the times, the mores.
Wellingtons, galoshes, and work-boots are obviously excluded from this as I would have no wish to ever wear them in anger, so to speak, few are laced, and I don't hate the wearers of them, many of whom are bigger than me and inclined to robust physicality.
But to get back to informal footwear lacing….I recently bought a pair of "Desert Boots" (a style of footwear that has nothing to do with the desert, and which can only be called boot because it barely covers the ankle) in navy blue suede, mainly because the eccentric lacing pattern allowed the upper where the laces meet to overlap; and then as if by magic, they fitted. And it got me thinking about lacing. This is obviously trivial stuff to the young cognoscenti who have been lacing their sneakers (to use the American word) in imaginative and functional ways for some years; but to an old fogey like me it has come as revelation. Of world-shaking import, no doubt. I predict a small beak-out of asymmetrical lacing in Jermyn St, the Burlington Arcade, and maybe even the dizzying heights of St James'. I would be amused to see Lobb doing something like that.
O the times, the mores.
