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I do wonder if it’s just something being lost in translation/interpretation - in your initial post you asked for stylish outfits. Don’t want to put words in your mouth but suspect to you this just means well put together, not sloppy, doesn’t clash too much. A coherent outfit that looks good whether it’s denim and a t shirt with boots or a suit with boots. At least that’s how I interpreted it. To others, I wonder if they thought you meant a more traditional style of some sort and drew their own conclusions about what you’d think is stylish based on some of the replies.I really don't know why this comes up in every shoe thread.
Half of CM nowadays is just dedicated to shoes. I can't think of a single thread anymore dedicated to discussing how to dress. This is is on a forum called StyleForum. In the past, Manton had that Good Taste thread, which was about how to dress. Some members made "weekly summaries" highlighting good WAYWT outfits. There were many discussions here about how to dress well.
Now half the front page is just dedicated to shoes. In any of these shoe threads, if you bring up this question of how to wear a certain shoe style well, you will be met with two answers:
1. I wear them however I want and any time I damn please
2. I wear them with suits, sport coats, tailored trousers, chinos, and jeans (no one ever says shorts because sartorial gentlemen don't wear shorts). There is often little to no discernment here, just a list of nearly every type of clothing.
If you push back and suggest there may be better ways to wear certain styles, you will get piled on. People will be very upset at the idea that there are better and worse ways to wear shoes. (I was recently in the TLB thread, where, for the first time, I saw some discussion that maybe oxfords aren't the best with jeans, but this is a very rare instance).
I don't get why the forum has become like this. It may be that cowboy boots are the exception and you can really wear them with whatever. But could it be that this forum is now just a "shoe forum" full of people who are averse to this discussion?
If you were to ask:
1. How do I buy these shoes
2. How are these shoes made
You will be met with dissertations. People will write long answers about how to import shoes from Romania and how the leather was tanned. But if you ask "what are some better ways to wear this style," people are dismissive at best. In @DWFII's post, he calls me prejudicial. I don't even know what I would be prejudicial against. But @Jmr928 just mentioned that he went through Lucchese's IG tags and saw some bad outfits. I have tried combing through IG accounts and seen the same. If someone is spending so much money on these things, why not take the time to figure out how to look good in them?
I'm not asking people to post photos of themselves. I don't post photos of my outfits and respect people's desire to be anonymous. I also try to not post outfits here that I dislike, as think that's needlessly mean (at least when they involve real people and not models). But if people think the more elaborately styled boots can be worn well, what's wrong with asking for examples?
Back in the day, there was an AAAC member who listed the clothes he wore every day. So he'd list something like "Kiton sport coat, John Lobb shoes, Hermes scarf, etc." It would just be a list. Then one day he posted a photo and ... the outfit looked quite bad. This happened for a while at The London Lounge. Back in the day, people didn't post outfits, they just described what they wore. But when people finally posted photos, clearly some people were well dressed while others were not. It can be up to the viewer to decide what is aesthetically pleasing and not, but clearly, words are not enough to convey an outfit.
Anyway, if people don't want to discuss how to wear cowboy boots well, I'm fine with that. I'll take this discussion elsewhere. I vaguely suspected that this is not the right thread for it anyway.
IMO boots work with most outfits, but not all outfits work. You’d be hard pressed to find an outfit that just gets killed by adding a pair of boots (shorts excepted IMO) but adding a pair of boots to a **** outfit doesn’t save it either. A lot of the outfits I saw that I didn’t like weren’t made worse by the boots but were just not outfits in general to my taste. I’ve got a high tolerance for rhinestones and thicc stitching and embroidery from growing up in the west but some of the stuff I saw was a bridge too far.
There are some considerations I have like a wide enough leg opening that my trousers or jeans don’t burst out like a puffer fish when I put them over but aside from that they’re pretty interchangeable. I snapped some pictures for some friends the other day discussing what an appropriate leg opening would be to pull off boots and I think I settled on 7.5+ - maybe 7 with a really heavy denim or better yet just buy some boot cut jeans and roll with it. You basically want to avoid this which I took just to show how the clothes can ruin it. This color though in a wider leg opening would be great.
There are certain types of boots I am not much a fan of for my purposes - for example las botas picudas, something with an overly square toe box or something with a ton of toe spring. I’m not a huge fan of some materials (but that comes down to taste.