Which belt to wear with your shoes?

Cover photo credit: Drake's lookbook

If you love clothes like us, you have certainly already asked yourself, one morning while getting dressed:

“Which belt should I wear with these shoes?”

The right choice of belt depends on how formal (or casual) your shoes are.

Let's see together which belts to favor and avoid depending on each type of pair.

Belt and formal shoes

1. Should we pair the belt with the shoes?

Yes.

In an outfit with formal shoes, the belt should match the shoes.

For example, if you wear dark brown shoes made of smooth leather, then you need a dark brown belt made of smooth leather.

If you have a perfectly matched belt as some brands offer (belt in the same leather and in the same color as the shoes), this is ideal.

What is also completely tolerable is if the two elements are very close. If you take dark brown shoes from one brand and a dark brown belt from another, the shades and appearance will not be 100% identical. But it does not matter.

2. Belts to avoid

First of all, you probably know this but it is always good to remember it. You should not wear a belt with an appearance (especially color) very different from shoes:

Then, the belt should not be too fancy compared to the shoes:

3. An avenue to explore

If you want to add a little touch of originality to a formal outfit, you can try a braided leather belt in the same color as your shoes :

Belt and semi-formal shoes

1. Should we pair the belt with the shoes?

You can combine the two:

But you don't have to.

In this style register, you can have contrast between the belt and the shoes.

Since we go beyond the framework of formal attire in the strict sense, there is more stylistic freedom.

Contrast in color or material, typically.

This way, one or two well-chosen belts can match the majority of your semi-formal shoes.

2. The belts to favor

You may have a dark brown belt for your formal outfits. If so, this belt can be reused in slightly less formal outfits.

It's even better if you can get a belt with a slightly different aesthetic than the classic square silver buckle ones.

You can play on:

• Belt thickness
• The shape of the loop
• The material, by exploring non-smooth leathers: grained, sueded, oily

In this way, quite a few options are available to you. Not all leather belts are created equal.

For color, staying on a shade of brown is a good, fairly safe option .

For example, you can go with a thin belt with a rounded buckle for a more chic look:

Or a thick leather belt with a rougher look for a more workwear style:

Western or ranger belts also have their place here:

3. Belts to avoid

The advantage of being in an in-between style register, between formal and casual, is that formal and casual belts will all work pretty much.

Some choices will not be optimal but there is no huge error possible in my opinion.

4. Some inspiring looks

Below, the moccasins are in tan suede leather while the belt is in smooth dark brown leather.

The color/material combination is not perfect but works because the outfit is not ultra-formal and because these shades of brown fit well into the rest of the outfit:

The following look is a great trompe l'oeil.

The belt is the same color as the shoes but the material is not the same. The body of the belt is made of braided fabric, visibly cotton, while the shoes are made of smooth leather.

The idea of ​​combining belt and shoes by color and providing contrast by material is ingenious:

On the last look, the color of the belt doesn't go perfectly with the shoes but that's okay.

The choice of a thicker belt is completely consistent in this workwear look with raw materials.

We could even say that this dark brown belt is part of a shades of leather and complements the medium brown jacket and the dark burgundy shoes:

Belt and casual shoes (sneakers)

1. Should we pair the belt with the shoes?

No.

The rule that applies in the formal register to combine the two does not apply in the casual register.

So , there is no need to wear a matching belt when you wear white sneakers.

One exception we could mention here is if you have brown sneakers.

In this case, putting on a brown belt makes sense:

2. The belts to favor

With sneakers, you can wear semi-formal belts, mainly made of leather as mentioned in the previous part.

Another option will be to go for fabric belts (cotton, linen, synthetic), which are decidedly casual.

I'm mainly thinking of braided belts:

But also belts made of a strip of fabric and which close with two rounded buckles :

We can also mention the cobra belt which is dear to Benoît:

For the color of the belt, I see several options:

• Go with a shade of brown because it is the classic color for this accessory
• If you want to have a different colored belt, it seems interesting to me to take one which complements the colors you usually wear, and which can possibly be a color reminder with one of your clothes, without it necessarily being yours. shoes.

3. Belts to avoid

In addition to the white belt mentioned above, I think you can avoid the very formal, suit belt with sneakers.

The style between the two contrasts a lot, a little too much.

This combination is probably less visually shocking than the opposite (formal shoes, casual belt) but it must be recognized that the result is not optimal.

4. Some inspiring looks

This is an outfit you've already seen in this episode of Gimmick.

Here is an example where the belt is not intended to match the shoes but rather to be combined with other elements of the outfit. In this case, the brown of the ranger belt goes with the blue of the shirt and the green of the pants.

For this second look, an example of a good integration of a brown belt with light sneakers.

Why does it work?

• The belt is not a very dark color and the sneakers are not optical white but ecru. The color gap between the two is not too strong
• The belt is not very formal. The appearance of the leather and the buckle is more reminiscent of a workwear type belt

This last look shows an example of what you can do with a beige fabric belt: combined with white, blue (or black) and green, the result can be very nice.

The outfit is casual, the belt contrasts a little at the waist but fits in well both in its color and in its style with the rest of the outfit.

BonneGueule belts in vegetable-tanned leather

Other articles on belts

Why belts obsess me – Carte blanche to David

Advice: How to choose and match your belt?