You know the moment I’m talking about. The single pair of shoes in your cupboard that you’re half-way out the door wearing one of and holding the other in your hand, bag already thrown over your shoulder and between five and seven minutes before you should have been dressed. That moment when “are loafers in style” goes from being a question you’d googled to something you actually have to answer with your feet. Loafers or not loafers. Past tense. Not “are loafers in this season in style?” By then no-one is thinking in seasons.
They’re thinking yes or no, an answer provided succinctly by your hand groping blindly in the cupboard on instinct alone. And instinct leads me to the loafers nine times out of ten, which should tell you where I stand on this argument before we even begin, ten or more years before I decided to finally sit down and try to write about it.
I’d like to have words with the lady who bought whatever magazine told her loafers were “having a moment” around the mid nineties as if they’d spent the previous thirty years somewhere relaxing with a nice sandwich. They hadn’t gone away, Loafers. You just stopped paying attention, which is wholly different, and is something that’s taken me far too long to realise myself. There’s a difference between footwear that goes out of style and footwear that simply wasn’t featured on page thirty eight this month. They are not the same thing and mistaking them as such is how you end up throwing perfectly good shoes away because some glossy magazine thinks you should.
The bit about the shoe, not whatever trend chart we’re on
Here’s the thing no-one pushing you “Loafers are back in style guys!” headlines wants to spend time on, which is that a good loafer doesn’t go out of style, it gets ruined by bad construction. Two completely different problems, the former being something soldience as we speak on whether something babies did thirty years ago also somehow makes it applicable to shoes released the same month. The build quality of your shoes is something you only discover by wearing them, ideally when you’re stood on a busy train station platform because your morning just happens to be rushing you. Were they stitched? Or glued? My beauties from 2003 are saddle stitched, have had the soles replaced twice already and aren’t showing any signs of stopping, and I’ll proudly admit that to date they beat any newer pair that thinks it runs the future of the category just by walking through my door.
The real test of whether something is well made or just here for the novelty factor is whether it can hack actually being worn like footwear as opposed to hung on a wall like some statement on fashion. Year frankly doesn’t matter when you’ve got a loafer that was put together with care, good leather that’s actually leather and was stitched to the sole rather than fused on with hot air and prayers. It doesn’t care what year you bought it, just whether you’ve wiped it down now and then and whether you’ve given it a rest every once in awhile so it doesn’t spend five days straight trudging through rain. Loafers that “go out of style” by actually deteriorating are almost exclusively the ones that were badly made in the first place, and therefore will fall apart at the seams just as someone somewhere decides their look is over. Coincidence? I think not.
I fell for this trap myself once, when I bought a frankly terrible pair just because they were suddenly inescapable. Paper thin sole, shuffled together, leather that wasn’t so much material as a vagrant suggestion, and they were dead within a year of owning them. Creased over the toe like a flyer that had been opened and refolded too many times. I took no lessons from that experience, just fell blindly into believing loafers were broken as a style rather than what they really were, which was this one brand thinking they could cut corners on the sole. It wasn’t until my ’03 pair continued going strong that I realised I’d been blaming the shape for what was purely and simply the manufacturer deciding they could make more profit with a thinner sole.
The bit about you, and not what shoes you’re wearing
Only problem with that is construction only tells you half the story. The other 50% is just you, and whether you look like you know what you’re doing. Trends aren’t a concern when you look like it suits you, and suits you doesn’t come with a expiration date. Trust me, I’ve seen men pull off loafers in every decade I’ve been noticing these things because they wore them with as much confidence as any other shoe, as opposed to looking like they thought Jane Birkin had dropped her whole outfit on public display for them to emulate. I tried a pair on with cropped trousers once, about three inches too short in the legs, and my sister looked at them, looked at me, and then simply said nothing. Silence from her is a review, and not a good one at that. Jeans? Loose-ish t shirt, sleeves rolled up, completely relaxed about the whole affair and suddenly they worked. Worked with me, not a time period.
Because that’s what “are loafers still in style” forgets. When people look at your shoes, they’re only judging half the look, half the outfit. You. Are you cutting it off square at the ankle or curled under like you’ve been groomed to wear them? Does it go with the trouser? Does it finish the look? Most importantly do you look like you actually live in them?
Something worn uncomfortably or too tight gives itself away every time, like somebody trying too hard. Fit and finish apply to your wardrobe as much as the wardrobe itself, and feeling like what you’re wearing fits how you want to carry yourself that day is timeless. Fashion eats it’s own tail in cycles because nothing is new, but confidence doesn’t go out of style no matter the year on the door. Nobody’s going “ohhhhh those lovely loafers, Bet he bought them around March 2007 when GQ said to!” They’ll just think shoes. Shoes that look like they belong on you.
So no loafers don’t go out of style. At least not if you know what you’re doing and aren’t wearing the cheap rubbish that can’t hold a stitch. Poorly made loafers go out of style because they’ve been properly worn in and someone needs an excuse not to replace them, and well made ones just fade into your cupboard knowing they’ll come back around. Mine came, we wore them till everyone else caught up and now they’re back out, and I’ll be wearing mine long after the next wave of media tells you whatever’s lurking in your cupboard isn’t fashionable enough to put on your feet.
