Rock the boat: which shoes to wear this summer.

Well heeled: but what works well with shorts?
 Photograph: Guardian Design Team

Are boat shoes acceptable? Is it still OK to wear Stan Smiths or should you upgrade? Should we all be wearing ugly trainers? One writer looks at the dos and don’ts of men’s summer footwear

 Well heeled: but what works well with shorts? Photograph: Guardian Design Team.

On my way to buy some boat shoes the other day, I made the mistake of asking the internet what it thought of them. You can’t buy shoes without knowing what Twitter thinks. Not in 2018. There’s no worse feeling than getting home and discovering your new kicks are racist or haven’t seen Game of Thrones or something.

The responses were varied, in that they were various shades of negative: “Nigel Farage has several pairs.” “Not OK with socks.” “Fine on a boat.” This newspaper’s restaurant critic, Grace Dent, had the final word, inviting me to consider whether or not I was Simon Le Bon in Duran Duran’s Rio video. If I was, boat shoes were acceptable. If not, neither were they. After a moment’s thought I concluded that, on balance, I wasn’t Simon Le Bon in the Rio video. The boat shoes were off, but what could I buy instead?

Ugly trainers: which pair are you?

Another summer, another shoe crisis. As a man, you do not have to be especially fashion conscious to worry about what goes on the end of your legs between September and May. Owning a mirror is enough. But when the sun’s out, the rules change.

By Ed Cumming.

Full story at The Guardian.