Kevin Williams, Tribune reporter
Hey. You. Yes, you. Want to know what kind of man you are? Look down.
If you’re walking around on some scuffed kicks that look like they were dragged behind your car before you put them on, stop. Shine. Your. Shoes.
We aren’t talking about an affectation, or some foppish thing. We’re talking about maintenance, not only of shoes, but your image. Shined shoes look better, and last longer. If you are wearing dress shoes, or any leather shoe, why wouldn’t you shine them?
Obvious question. Which is why we’d like for somebody to explain to us why legions of men have forsaken this noble thing. Distressed is different from messed up.
“If you want to see a well dressed man, first thing you do is look down,” says Grant Harris, head of Image Granted, a male style consultancy (imagegranted.blogspot.com). “When you build a house, you lay the foundation, you have to lay the groundwork first. For a well-dressed man, that starts with your footwear.”
Harris thinks that some of the problem is that young dudes buy cheap shoes, and maintenance for them is to buy another pair. It’s also a question of behavior and templates. A weekend ritual for my father was setting the paste shoe polish on fire to soften it up, and using a well-loved cloth and just the right amount of water to shine his shoes. For me, it was part of being a man. Brett McKay, who runs artofmanliness.com, thinks so as well. The site has instituted Shoe Shine Saturday, during which message board community members shine their shoes then send in the pictures. Shiniest pair wins a nifty keen cedar shoe shine box. Day 2 of the site’s 30 Days To A Better Man is “shine your shoes.”
To you, it’s just something that you probably don’t care about, but tatty kicks might even affect your job prospects. Think about that one, lazybones.
“When you go in for an interview in a corporate career, it is always an advantage,” says Harris. “If you take two candidates, and on paper they’re the same, with the same experience and education and same resume, then it comes down to what kind of person they are, and that includes their appearance.”
Think about it. If you crow on your resume about being “detail oriented,” first impressions are often correct. The interview suit with hammered shoes make a liar out of you.
Convinced yet? How about this: women notice your shoes. At one style blog, The Shoe Buff (http://theshoebuff.com), four women in the industry were asked a number of question, including one about the importance of a man’s footwear when sizing him up as a friend or potential dating material. Again, the news isn’t good for you scuffers.
“Very important,” says one blogger, Manolo. “Shoes make the man.”