Beefroll and strap, yes.

No tassel ever. Nothing anyone says will ever change my mind on this.

Nice one on the tassel.   Loving all the posts chums

Berk:  can’t get behind loafers (full strap) with suit.  Tassels. Yes. It’s like a button down.  A bit of informality peculiar to the code of our sartorial tribe (long may it survive and even thrive, multiply and whatnot).

But loafers alone with suit.  Too jarring. Too at odds with the rest of the thing.

Strangely I’d argue against loafers with black tie for another reason.  I think the black loader looks good but that’s it’s very problem.  They’ve got to be black for evening and that suggests too much thought -/ for its not just the tossing of an old pair of loafers on like it was just an afterthought.  I’m missing a sentence  or two of reasoning here.  But i think I’m right and think i could persuade you.   

Those were probs the same pair the old codger wore everyday.
Calf. He kept at shop and changed into them when he got there. 

He wore the Bean slipons in inclement weather.  Though also the ol’
gallosh as well.

My whole theory on loafers is everything got fucked up with the redesign of trousers
And the way they fit.   Threw everything off.  Same way with Brooks shirts.  The old cuts.

All the fitted stuff was unnecessary.  I’m in decent to good shape and I still think the full cut
Oxford and the full cut trou looks good.  Amongst many body types.   Having said that the more fitted British stuff I’ve worn.

Anyhoot:  whatever the standard opening on a pair of press or brooks trou was, was I though good
For the tassel loafer.  There were at times too wide an opening or too small and that really through off balance
Though to complicate matters 501’s opening was smaller and weejuns and even brooks tassel worked i thought, so what do I know?

Black weejuns were for weirdos.  Theatre club, those who thought themselves hip and intellectual.  All these associations probs long gone now.


Beefroll not so big a fan though Bean did them and the strap forever.  Dexter of Maine I assume.

Our British pals have never seemed to care for the Alden loafer.  I was a fan. Still think it best. 

I went to buy the Brooks version and found no longer carried.

I understand last was different and it was of course unlined. 

Had weejuns for years.  Wore those things like some wear flip flops.

Through everything:  snow, rain, socks and no.  Would polish to perfection and then let go.

Obviously not same quality now.

Love the Alden pennny but the LHS in particular the cordovan is really a smart shoe and a beefroll or similar actually seems a better fit with a lot of the things I wear.

Some excellent observations in this thread ... so in no particular order.

Great point by Horace about loafers requiring the correct width of trouser bottoms, flappy 9"+ doesn't work while narrow -8" exposes too much of the shoe. I suppose this is true of all shoes, but loafers in particular.

The Alden made for Brooks Brothers black cordovan strap loafers are indeed a smart shoe. I was fortunate enough to buy a deadstock pair a few months back at an attractive price, they felt a touch loose to begin but, as Stan says, they sort of mould themselves to your feet. They are far and away the most comfortable loafers I own and I love them. I think they work with a casual'ish suit at social event but don't know if I would suit them up for a business gig. I can confirm that they look dorkish with chinos.

Not only have Aldens stopped making shoes for Brooks Brothers but it seems that neither do Peal and Co make the English dress shoes for them either. When I called into 346 last week all the shoes were Italian made, even the 'Cordovan Collection'. On a brighter note there were plenty of US manufactured OCBDs on offer in different colours and stripes, beautifully made and good cloth. At $140 - 40% discount they were well priced too ... but no chest pockets which put me off.

Wearing tassels doesn't make you a bad person either.

on the subject of black penny loafers, I have a pair of Alden Leisure Handsewns in black calf, they go very well with suits, for me

I have never had a problem with wearing the right loafer with a suit

on the casual side, the black penny loafer was always a great nighttime choice in the city

I can remember one day in college, a century ago, wearing a pair of 501 shrink-to-fits, a t-shirt,a gray cotton sweatshirt, and a pair of black Weejuns ... it was drizzly, the town was made of gray stone, the black penny loafers fit the palette, but I rarely wore actual shoes and that was anomalous .....

Thanks Randy, no Ivy League menswear site is worth a tinkers cuss unless it features grammar correction.

On black pennies (continued)

A friend of mine is 82 or thereabouts. He spotted my black Sebago beefrolls one day and raised an eyebrow. Seems at Brown University in the late 1950s, especially in the hard-drinking, artsy crowd, black loafers were not "shoe."

"Shoe" meaning, roughly, "cool" or "hip."

I thanked him for this blast from the past.

I don't wear them often but when I do it's with grey pants of some kind.

Re: Shoe, in my exhibition research I came across this which summed it up very neatly.

At Yale there is a system for pigeonholing the members of the college community which is based on the word “shoe.† Shoe bears some relation to the word chic, and when you say that a fellow is “terribly shoe† you mean that he is a crumb in the upper social crust of the college, though a more kindly metaphor might occur to you. You talk of a “shoe† fraternity or a “shoe† crowd, for example, but you can also describe a man’s manner of dress as “shoe.† The term derives, as you probably know, from the dirty white bucks which are the standard collegiate footwear (you can buy new ones already dirty in downtown New York to save you the embarrassment of looking as though you hadn’t had them all your life), but the system of pigeonholing by footwear does not stop there. It encompasses the entire community under the terms White Shoe, Brown Shoe, and Black Shoe

White Shoe applies primarily to the socially ambitious and the socially smug types who affect a good deal of worldly sophistication, run, ride and drink in rather small cliques, and look in on the second halves of football games when the weather is good. They try so hard not to be collegiate in the rah-rah (or, as they would say, “Midwestern†) sense of the term that they are probably the most “collegiate† types now in college. Brown Shoe applies to the general run of those who are socially acceptable but above thinking that it really makes any difference. They constitute the general middle class of the college that overlaps somewhat into both White and Black; their ambition is to be the average citizen raised to the highest power compatible with being a cultured and relaxed gentleman. Black Shoe implies some of the attributes of the “grind† and is applied to those who participate a little too eagerly in seminars, literary teas, and discussions of life, literature, and the pursuit of philosophy. They are in college because they consider it primarily an educational and not a social institution; they mind their own business rather intensely, are probably in love with the girls they will eventually marry, and in many respects appear a good deal more sophisticated and  grown up than the White Shoe crowd.

The shoe categories obviously allow for a great deal more precise definition than this, as I have no doubt the first Yale man you meet will tell you. But pleasant as it is under the elms of New Haven, let us move into other groves of academe. We will have to take our “shoes† with us, however; the terminology may not be the same in all the colleges, but we will keep finding men whom the shoes will fit.

Source: Esquire - September 1953 "How Shoe Can You Get", Russell Lyne