A Plague of White Shoes

I'm worried. I've spotted a men's fashion trend for the coming spring-summer season that is very disturbing. I'm talking about white shoes.

Last week I happened to be in one of those self-serve shoe-store chains that have become popular. They offer a large selection and the pretense of a good deal, but if you pay attention to prices or do a little online comparison shopping, you'll find that these stores charge pretty much the same as what you'd pay for the shoes anywhere else.

Anyway, there are two of these stores within about a mile of our house, different, competing chains. The names of the stores don't matter, because they sell the same shoes. There's also that big one downtown, but does anyone bother to shop downtown anymore? Last time I was down there, on a weekday after work, it was like a ghost town.

So I was wandering around the shoe store, mostly just killing time, and I started to notice all kinds of white shoes in the men's section. Some were leather, which is bad enough, but some of them appeared to be fabric, which is I don't know how many kinds of horrifying. Most of them were in the form of loafers or what are sometimes called "driving shoes."

I'm starting to think that fashion designers sit around going, "Let's see, what can we come up with that's completely hideous, but if we package and present and market it the right way, people will think they have to have it?" "Hey, I know--how about we do the white shoes again?" "Perfect! Ha ha, those suckers. Pass the espresso, will ya?"

I lived through this fashion scourge the first time around; it was called the Seventies, and it wasn't any more pleasant back then. When you wear white shoes, you abandon any element of dignity you might have had. There is one exception to this: white bucks, those suede shoes with red rubber soles that are favored by wealthy WASP types in the summer months, most likely with no socks. It's pretty much impossible to be anything but dignified in those.

If you feel like you want to try to rock the white bucks this summer, be my guest. But any other white shoes that are not sneakers or golf shoes are just wrong. Proceed at your own risk.