﻿Black Shoes & Jeans_ My Thoughts On This Style Combination
[0:00:00] So, I got a question from Nashville the other
day. It goes like this, “Antonio, I want to wear black dress shoes with jeans. All my accessories
are black. What color dress shoes do you recommend if black is a no go? Thank you. Dean.”
Thanks, Dean. It’s a good question. The answer is a little bit complicated,
and I’ll explain why in today’s video. [Music]
So, the question is can you wear blue jeans with black shoes. And on the surface, the answer
should be no. You shouldn’t mix casual blue jeans with formal black shoes. But,
the real world answer is a little bit more complicated because of all the options out
there when it comes to black shoes and all the options out there when it comes to blue jeans.
So, let me explain this with a Venn diagram. So, right here we’ve got black shoes,
over here we’ve got blue jeans. This was 50 years ago. Notice how they are not touching each other,
but over the last 50 years, what has happened? These two have come closer together.
We now have tons of styles of black shoes that are going to be much more casual and
we have tons of styles of jeans, which are going to be a little bit dressier.
So, as you can see the answer nowadays isn’t as cut and dry. It really depends on the style
and the formality of the shoe and the type of jeans that we’re trying to match it with.
Now, historically, black dress shoes especially made in the style with a closed lacing system were
reserved for formal wear and for business wear. Basically, dark-colored suits are
where we saw this type of footwear being worn. Now, over the last 50 to 70 years, we’ve seen a
number of styles emerged much more casual styles. We see open lacing systems, we see slip on loafers
like what we have here with this monk strap. This is going to be a much more casual style.
So, although, it’s a black shoe, this is something that you can dress down and you can wear with odd
trousers. You could actually even wear with possibly dark-colored jeans. And some black
colored shoes, it seems they’re actually designed they call for more casual type of trousers.
This right here isn’t going to look good in my opinion with a suit. What’s this
going to work with? Dark-colored jeans. And now, switching to the other side, let’s
look at jeans. Over a hundred years ago, this was the uniform of the working men, and still today,
working men around the world leverage jeans. But, what’s happened in the last 30 to 40 years?
We’ve seen designers jumped on jeans. It started happening in the 50s, 60s,
70s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that we saw the fit adjust. All of sudden,
jeans became much more accepted and nowadays, they are seen as a classic in a man’s wardrobe.
And with so many designs so many cuts, we’ve also got a wide variety of colors. And something
interesting happens. Whenever you go darker with denim, we’re talking black,
dark gray, or indigo, in my opinion all of a sudden it’s something that you can
start even matching with the sports jacket. You can start to level up and all of a sudden,
we see these two circles getting closer and starting to have overlap. So,
a pair of black jeans with a tapered cut, well, it seems to me there’s going to be
a natural fit with a pair of black shoes especially those black boots.
And there are some colors out there that work really well with black. So,
you get a pair of slim cut jeans in maroon, mix them right here with those monk straps in black,
perfect combination. Well-fitted gray denim with a pair of black Gucci horsebit loafers, why not?
Now, of course, there’s still going to be plenty of instances where this combination doesn’t work.
Most jeans that have a distinctively blue, lighter colored denim, distressed denim, this right here
is going to be more casual isn’t in general going to work with most black shoes especially
the black shoes that are more formal in design. Now, what about brown? What about oxblood?
In general, these colors are going to work much better with denim. Why? Because they
are much more casual shoes not only are these styles right here going to be more casual,
but the colors make it so that they’re going to work with more casual-type trousers.
Now, one thing I love about oxblood is if you already have a collection of black shoes,
this is going to be easy to introduce. Notice the sole right here is black,
so this will work with your black accessories. Dean, you said you probably already got maybe a
few belts, maybe some of your watch straps are black. Point being is you could easily
bring in oxblood to your collection and you probably get a lot of miles because you’ll
be able to match it with a lot of your jeans. Now, personally when I look at my shoe collection,
it is dominated by browns. I got nothing against black, but to me it’s too stark of a contrast with
most of the clothing I want to wear. I found brown just suits me better, so I gravitate towards it.
But, if you’ve already got a lot of black in your wardrobe, you can also look at gray shoes,
you can, again, look at oxblood to add it to supplement. But, what I
like about brown is just it’s flexibility. So many different shades from dark and I’ve
got this with a suede, you can go to [mids] colored brown. You can go with just a tan
right here for the summer. Even this pair of brown shoes, a little bit darker, but still
relatively casual we can tell by that open lacing system, which makes the shoes more casual.
But this right here, I’d have to say I’d still maybe I can wear them with dark-colored denim,
but in general, because of the contrast, I probably actually wear this with a pair of gray
flannels or maybe lighter colored odd trousers. So, in summary, my answer is, yes, you can wear
more formal jeans with more casual black dress shoes because there’s overlap. But,
if we have the opposite, you’ve got those casual jeans trying to mix them with the dress shoes,
probably not a good combination. Now, gents, I know you’ve got an opinion.
I want to hear from you down in the comments. Do you agree black shoes with jeans? Yes or no?
So, what video to watch next? Well, how about how to save your shoes from mud and grime? Now, gents,
for this video, we got these shoes super dirty. I had a lot of fun. And go check out how we clean
them up, how we got them looking brand new. [0:05:32] End of audio