Black shoes died with the clothing rituals linked to life in society.
Today, people rarely go into town for business, dressing in gray and black to meet the requirements of etiquette. Because no brown in town , you see? You have to wait until you retire to your country house for the weekend so the party of tweed, loden and brown shoes can begin.
It all no longer makes sense.
Now, we listen to Beethoven's Fifth on Spotify, in our living room, at 9 a.m., while drinking a bowl of Miel Pop's. No need for a bow tie anymore.
The powerful no longer wear tuxedos. They wear a hoodie, jeans and sneakers.
Those who wear a suit want to give the illusion that they have power. But they play on codes that no longer apply.
Like the black shoe. It was the one you wore in town, to dine in society, to be seen with beautiful formal shoes on your feet, because that's what civilized people did. She wore all the black and gray gear we wore.
We no longer wear this outfit today, so what's the point of wearing the color of shoe that goes with it?
Especially since brown goes with everything. It is the choice of wisdom.
It creates richer connections between colors. It always goes better with the modern clothes we wear: jeans, chinos, parkas, fleece and so on! It's a safe choice. Which will never be out of the context in which we want to fit. You just need to vary the model of the shoe, the brown can stay.
And yet, despite all that, the black shoe has something exquisite that the brown one doesn't have, I love it and could only wear that one .
I will try to explain why.
My love for black shoes began…
…when I still believed that black went with everything .
This is the #1 belief that we hear all the time, which is not true, without being strictly false either. Black never offers a richness of association with another color but never clashes with another. Hence my half-hearted response, if I may say so.
I'll take an example: eggplant and navy enhance each other, because there are connections that are made, the colors become richer when they are juxtaposed; eggplant and black coexist, they don't go badly together, they don't repel each other, but there is no bridge between them.
But we'll come back to that.
Back when I thought the best choice one could make was black and when it came time to buy a pair of dress shoes,
When I arrived at BonneGueule, I still had them:
I think they also reminded me of my first love with clothing, born with the first looks, from 2011, by Alexandre Mattiussi from Ami .
I wore them a lot, and intuitively, to the point of abandoning them for brown shoes that definitely went with everything, while in some cases I had difficulty pairing black ones.
And then one day, it clicked
I'm not a champion at remembering dates, how things happened, or even predicting what's going to happen. But this photo from 2019 marks this period when my understanding of the black shoe (and, at the same time, that of the silhouette) evolved:
It's quite simple: I started to find this point of balance, in my outfits, between formal and casual. And the black shoe proved very useful in this exercise.
If we take the outfit above:
- Black allows for strong contrast at the bottom, where there is little contrast at the top. This brings balance to the outfit.
- The derby belongs to an aesthetic register that goes well with the jacket + shirt combo
- But the black of the derby leans towards the more formal where the shirt and its pockets lean towards the casual
So.
This outfit symbolizes my sense of balance learned alongside and thanks to the black shoe. She always fit into outfits that I really liked, that stood out without trying too hard. Where browns will always seek harmony, go with the direction of the outfit, not wrinkle, blacks have so much more aesthetic power!
In this photo, black (the silhouette) is used exactly as in my outfit above. But that's not the only way to use black.
On the superiority of the black shoe (proof by the image)
1. To highlight colors and textures, by contrast
Without the black shoes, this outfit is a little bland. It is not a failure because the volumes are interesting and controlled, the colors match well. However, the eye needs a dose of contrast which allows us to better understand the entire silhouette.
For me, it also allows me to better appreciate the stripes on the shirt, for example. They could have gone unnoticed with white or brown shoes. Yes I am serious.
This is the role of black, to highlight textures, materials and patterns more than colors by contrast. Look at this :
Black helps fill the space while highlighting the wood and its stripes, as well as the concrete that we appreciate better.
2. Play with registers
From a Namu Shop lookbook
The aesthetic of the outfit is casual and Ivy League. The presence of moccasins is logical. But not the fact that they are black. If we had stuck with dark brown moccasins, the style of the outfit would not change.
But the fact that they are black takes us to a higher notch in formality. As with Boras, higher up, the outfit becomes slightly less natural and moves towards something more elaborate.
An aesthetic search. A similar approach to make a play on words with shoes.
The same goes here (it’s also a moccasin but that’s not the important thing here):
3. Using black as a color that is not a color
There are times when you have to choose shoes, because you have to go out with good shoes, but you don't want to add anything in texture, material or color to the rest of the outfit.
We need shoes on mute .
The black shoe is king for this. It allows you to stay in the outfit. It sometimes guarantees harmony, to remain within the aesthetic objective that we have set from head to toe.
We forget the shoes in favor of the coat and pants.
In another register :
Sneakers make sense. They are black so as not to add anything to the top of the outfit.
4. All of this at once
Boras is no stranger to black shoes.
There, it allows him to:
- Present a foot that does not clash with the rest of the outfit which plays more on medium, even dark shades, so the black blends in well to leave room…
- … to its play of textures (patina of the jeans and incredible fabric from Molly&Sons)
- and at the same time, with the derby, it places the outfit in another register than simply casual . After all, the rest of the outfit is made up of a t-shirt, a workwear vest, a military overshirt and jeans. It's casual . With black derbies, it becomes something else. He pulls it towards something more formal if you like, making it hybrid, less graspable and therefore more refined.
TIP:
Olive greens and black go extremely well together. Perhaps because this color, widely used in the military, fits well in the image we have of it with the formality of a black shoe, also used in parades by the military.
To go further: the “French Ivy” style
My love of black shoes also resonates perfectly with my love of Ivy style. And I believe that it is above all the presence of this color of shoe in this American style which makes it French.
I will let you continue the reflection with Dick Carroll , an American designer who, thanks to his illustrations, theorizes or rather draws (!) the contours of the definition of this Franco-American style:
