Been meaning to make this post for over a month.
The extreme shoes have virtually gone in my city. Gone are the w-i-d-e square toes, and gone are the pointy toes. In the shops and on the street men are wearing a more classic shaped shoe.
And now young men are getting more into classic designed shoes due to the internet. Fxh and myself went to a shoe makers show as part of the recent highly regarded Melbourne Fashion Festival, and the room was full of young blokes and women wearing shoes in designs that their great grand parents would have worn. Many fine looking cool women were in penny loafers, and blokes were in oxford and derbies, and even brogues.
10 years ago you only saw older conservative types in brogues. They were considered fuddy duddy shoes...certainly no young men wore them because they were into square toes or pointed shoes with toes turned up. And you never saw many young men in monkstraps unless they were cool music industry types. In the last 5 years a flood of brogues and monks have hit the market, and now young men can be seen regularly wearing such footwear.
The fuddy duddy atmosphere is changing due to the internet. We now have websites that specialise in talking pictures of men in Melbourne wearing their shoos. We now have more stores than ever offering goodyear and blake - rapid shoes. English goodyear have become a craze now. The cool people are selling the traditional shoes in shops now, and Henry Bucks have moved the stuffy fuddy duddies out and getting young social blokes in. There is even one shoe salesmen covered in tatts at HB, that would have been unheard of 5 years ago. There is none of this stuffy `are you rich enough to buy our shoes' crap now.
Once you would rarely see goodyear shoes in the shops, they were few and far between. Now they are everywhere, and now we can actually buy shoetrees LOL.
20 years ago there were two groups. There were the conservative businessmen who knew the good shoes, and there was a minority group of young men who were into decent stitched shoes. Not many young blkes were into shoos, but now they are all getting into it. Old man shoes is becoming hip again...blokes are discovering the awesomeness of English shoes and avoiding the once popular flimsy ltalian shoes...it warms my heart. You see kids in Edward Green, Grenson etc now...and you think "yeah, he is one of us" as you give him the nod of approval, and they know what you mean.
Young blokes have had enough of the slobs attire that our grand parents and parents have got into as rebellous folkks against the traditional stuff. The kids are bringing traditional shoo style back. There are still lots of slobs and nerds wearing sneakers thinking that it is cool to be casual (especially in the uncultured areas), but that crap is dying out.
People are learning the importance of a good shoe due to awesome passionate young blokes selling them in stores. The shoes have gone from perceived stuffy richman footwear to shoes for the ordinary man.
Bravo to the shoomen...their numbers are growing. Lets be the BIG daddy shoomen and take these kids under our wing.
The efforts you and fxh have taken to change Melbourne shoo culture have been the vanguard of change. IMHO of course.
Last edited by The_Shooman (2014-05-10 21:50:19)
Have also pumped up Mr J.H (Australia's top bespoke maker) and the legendary Karl Schott to some extent, but other shoo industry blokes remain unpumpable. I've tried to pump up the last maker Bruce Millar, but l have made no inroads...he is completely unpumpable by myself. Grrr. BUT...Bruce gets pumped up by different methods...really high level methods that are wayyy above my head. Bruce gets pumped by the really BIG guys around the world...l am just a little boy with a small pump. My small pump works well on most of the guys, but Bruce works with BIG guys with really reeeely BIG pumps. Bruce's connections are unsurpassed in this country, he seems to know everything going on in the U.K, Asia and all over the world.
Footwear is still the order of the day over here. Trainers and cheap square toe stuff.