5.10 Dirtbags. Sub £50 in sales/with vouchers. Smartish when new, last a good long time, stealth soles grippy on flats, comfy for walking. When they get over trashed, buy a newer pair for man-about-towning, and keep the older ones for wetter rides and gardening.
Errrm, I confess to wearing Salomons pretty much all the time – mid height boots mostly, and a shoe type if it actually gets hot in the summer. My feet love me, not a scrap of hard skin to be found 😀
Sod that high heels lark!
Fit flop shoes are incredibly comfortable and they have always got something on sale. I can’t bear the whole labels thing but I have had quite a few Nike trainers for pretty demanding travelling duties and they have been faultless. You just need to find the model that suits you and your activities.
in the office and everyday shoes = Vans, client meetings and other smart events suit & brogues. Never the two shall mix. Never, ever shoes & jeans, never ever smart trousers and trainers.
I have been wearing the same pair of Jungle Mocs for about 6 years now…. Apart from some formal ones for our annual dinner dance and a pair of dealer boots for the cattle market (lot of cowshite), they are the only shoes I own (other than riding & hikjing boots but they don’t count. Oh, and my wellies, which I probably wear 80% of the time 🙂
thats just about me. away from work im hardly ever out of jeans and my footwear is more tailored towards what ‘top’ im wearing rather than the jeans. a polo shirt can be either the onitsuka type ‘trainers’ mentioned above or leather ‘casual’ shoes a la .
a hoody will be onitsuka or trainers only, yer gola retro/samba types tho, no ‘£200 airmaxnutterb*st*rd down wiv da kids’ trainers. a casual shirt will be leather casual shoes only.
onitsukas, hoodies and polos cheap as chips from m&m direct, ‘expensive’ casual shoes from the ‘smart clothes shop’ in town. theyre the rules 😀
Most of this thread is written in consumerese! I must be really old as I used to wear Docs or walking shoes for comfort until my thirtieth year before being stricken with inflammatory arthritis and have since been searching for any shoe that I can wear that doesn’t make the balls of my feet scream in agony.
At this point am resultantly considered by peers to belong to a well-established/pitiable out-group so ‘comfy shoes’ (at least to me) means something different again. ie an aspiration born purely, irreducibly, of function/enablement and therefore increased independence. If I do happen to find a pair of pavement-bashers that don’t look like NHS-approved built-up shoes for Frankenfeet I’d probably be grumpier still, as the fashionistas would then think I simply had poor taste rather than no taste. Good job I married someone who loved me not for my shoes as am thinking dating now would be an expensive and confusing minefield 😯
oh also got some Timberland walking boots that are currently doing sterling service around E Europe
I’ve worn a pair of these Timberlands almost every day for four years (they’ve just had their fifth heal/sole). They’ve supported me along many a flânerie of several European cities and have served me very, very well. I wear work boots when I need toe caps, trainers when I run and hiking boots when I go walking or if it’s raining too heavily for plain boots. 5.10s for riding.