Style File: Spring Shoes

Along with the sweaters and heavy coats, most of the boots have now been stored in the basement as well. Spring has arrived in full force, which means it's also time for lighter-weight, lighter-colored pants, and seasonal shoes to go with them.

The first shoes I bought this season were these tan bucks from Lands' End. I'd been thinking about getting a pair of bucks since last summer, which is interesting, because a few years back I wouldn't have wanted anything to do with them, so it goes to show that our tastes do change over time.

I still wouldn't want a white pair; that's a little too To Kill A Mockingbird for me. There are those who advocate getting a pair of white bucks and wearing them to death so that they don't remain white for long, and there's definitely a certain carefree panache to that, but I feel they wouldn't be appropriate to wear to work, even in my casual office environment.

No, I knew that a pair in light tan would work much better for me. I started with eBay, hoping I could score a vintage pair from Brooks Brothers or maybe even Alden, but I never found what I wanted in my size at a reasonable price. I did run across a very cool pair of vintage light gray bucks from L.L. Bean (old enough so they probably would have been manufactured by Bean themselves, or at one of their Maine neighbors), but they were a size too small.

But this spring, shoes like this are available almost everywhere, in many different shades of tan, taupe, and even darker brown. The first ones I saw this year were from Bean. The price was right ($79) and I was leaning toward getting them, but I was worried that the color was a little too light, and more importantly, I've had problems with the last few pairs of shoes I've bought from Bean, and had to return them because wearing them was causing pain in my ankles and calves. I think their shoes have suffered an unfortunate decline in quality, so for now I'm staying away.

Bass always has this style of shoe, but let's face it, their quality isn't so great anymore either, and they also didn't have the shade of tan I was after. Still, if you just want something to bang around in, they're probably okay. J. Crew has had buck oxfords for at least a couple of seasons, but theirs are more expensive ($140), and the sole isn't the right shade of red. When you look at the images online it looks right, but when you see the shoe in person, it's too dark. (Yes, this matters to me.)

I was in Nordstrom a couple of months back, and got excited when I saw some light gray bucks that reminded me of the vintage Bean ones I'd seen on eBay, until I saw that they had an off-white sole instead of the traditional red one. Too bad. Even more amusing, this shoe also comes in light blue and red, both rather clowny colors for men's shoes. It's difficult for me to imagine who might like these. (Weirdly, if you follow that Bass link above, you'll find very similar-looking shoes in those same colors, so there's probably a common manufacturer there.) This shoe also comes in a very pale beige (which, interestingly, they call white) on a red sole, and it's available in wide widths. I didn't try them on, but maybe I should have.

Then I saw the Lands' End shoes, at the same price as Bean's. At first I wasn't sure I liked the little piping detail you can see in the picture, but it grew on me. The shoes of theirs that I've had in the past have been decent, and while I wish they offered them in wide widths, that shortcoming was offset by Lands' End's prolific discounting. For the past couple of years, LE has made it very easy to avoid paying full price or shipping for their merchandise. I get emails from them literally every day with one discount or another. So I took advantage of a 30%-off-shoes discount and got these for $56, plus free shipping.

(If you live near a Sears that has a Lands' End Shop in it, you can get the discounts there too, and sometimes you find stuff that's already marked down. Recently the Mrs. got a pair of LE shoes on clearance for $6, and a pair of jeans for the same price.)

I think I'll probably even continue to wear these in the summer, with shorts. Until last year, I wore nothing but sneakers with shorts, until I realized that I needed to branch out and have some variety. I looked around for some boat shoes, but I didn't want ones with white soles. I found this pair from Clarks that are among the most comfortable shoes I have, and are water-resistant too.

When I placed my recent Gap order, I needed to get to $100 to get free shipping, so I added a couple of things I wasn't certain I would keep. (This is the oldest trick in the free-shipping book, as long as you can return items to a B&M location and there's one convenient to you.) One was these classic canvas CVO (that stands for "circular vamp oxford," which I didn't know) sneaks. With the discount I was getting on my entire order, they ended up being $24. They're pretty comfortable and lightweight, so these will also be useful this summer.

Still on the wish list: these adidas Rod Laver Vintage sneakers (specifically, the white and red ones). This shoe is a variant of the classic Rod Laver design that adidas has been selling for 40-some years. It's slimmed-down and refined, a bit more grown-up looking, and thus avoids the stoner/Dave Matthews Band/hacky-sack connotations the Laver has acquired.

The red-trim version has not yet gone on sale, but I keep checking the adidas web site a couple of times a week. The other two colorways have already hit their site and sold out, so I was going to try to reserve a pair at the adidas Originals store in Harvard Square, but it has closed. I'm not sure what other options I might have, but I'm thinking of contacting one of the other Originals stores, like maybe the one in Manhattan (where there's a DJ and the music was insanely loud, louder than any other store I've ever been in).