What Shoes to wear? part 2

What is a good shoe rotation?

If you are finding your shoes die within months of buying and always look scuffed and busted up for most of the time, then you don't have enough shoes....or you're going hiking in them. Mostly I've heard this terrible description crop up when a gent has only one or two pairs for work in their rotation. And that's just not enough. Minimum, and I mean bare minimum to get decent life and wear out of them, is 3 black shoes for work (if your mostly suited) plus 2 casual weekend pairs. If you're more in media circles work wise or just have a funky kind of job then you can be mostly casual but would recommend you always have a good pair of black shoes for formal occasions.





Basically some of you may gasp and say "5 pairs of shoes!" If you wish your shoes to last a decent length of time (over 2 years) and look good during hat time then this is a must. I would advise good quality as well so you actually enjoy wearing them too and the last longer but even with cheap high street shoe shops this will improve your shoe wearing experience.





Disgusting fact: the human foot on an average sweats half a pint to a whole pint a day of slat water into our shoes and socks. Nice, huh? This is absorbed into the leather and cork of the shoes we wear. So, shoes need to dry and recover its shape after this and with a 3 shoe rotation each shoe gets aty least 2 days to breath. This should also help cut down foot odour as the smell left in our shoes is down to the bacteria attracted by the sweat and is multiplied if never able to air. Some people sweat more than others and if you are one of these people you must have more shoes then most to help cut down this odour. Now imagine we sweat that much every day and we only have one or two pairs of shoe. The leather starts to degrade quickly, the salt compounds and can show up as a white residue on the outside of your shoes, the cork begins to rot leading to soles needing replacements sooner (rubber soles are not affected as much by this), and the smell can sometimes clear a room when we take them off.

So three formal is a minimum. Five formal and two casual is an even better goal as if you can do this it will mean your shoes will get an average of week to air and seriously lengthen the life and look of your footwear.



By the way casual does not mean trainers. It means tans and browns and swedes and so on. Like the ones above. Great felling shoes for the weekend walks around town or to the county fair. Their not for doing DIY around the house. They're for all he times you wish you had something decent to wear to a friends birthday, or when you're taking your partner out to the theatre or dinner. These are for that.