That’s the closest we ever came to endorsing the square-toe: “logic.” Otherwise we ignored it. We looked at it askance. We wondered when it would go away. We never fought it because we never took it seriously. And why should we? Flat. Wide. Often unnaturally shiny. Usually with double stitching along the vamp. The Pilgrims’ Pride. The Joey/Ross/Chandler Special. The “going out” shoe that Pauly on Jersey Shore wore (and, let’s face it, wears) with his “going out” shirt. How could that last?
Yet it has. On our brothers! Our cousin at his prom! That guy at the coffee shop in a nice suit! Congressmen hosting town halls and telling you you’ll be fine without health insurance! They started wearing square-toes in the ’90s, and they just—well, they just never took them off. But why? How did this shoe not go the way of the opera cape? What we’re starting to understand, after hosting some seriously robust panel discussions with editors and friends, among them square-toe sympathizers and recovering enthusiasts, is that the square-toe shoe is not anti-fashion. It represents a misguided but sincere attempt at being fashionable. It’s a striving toward…something.
What tragic irony.
Because...and how do we say this as delicately as we can? It is fucking ugly. It makes your legs look like tree trunks. And it has the power to decimate an otherwise fashionable look. Your tailored suit is veritably shot in the head when you finish it with a pair of toasters on your feet. “The first thing I notice on a man—besides height and hair, obviously—is whether he’s wearing good shoes,” a lady who used to work here made sure all of us knew. “Men dress from the shoes up,” every fashionable man from Giorgio Armani to LeBron James has said in this magazine over the past 60 years. Point being: Shoe shape is an important—perhaps the most important—fashion choice. And getting it wrong is dangerous. Square-toe shoes can have the same effect as showing up with a Jim Carrey Dumb and Dumber bowl cut. Despite what we said in 2003, there’s no logic. When’s the last time you wore a pair of non-square-toe shoes and thought, If only I had a few more inches of space in my toe box? Never. Because you don’t need more space in your toe box. Your toe box is fine.
In 2013 we said, “Unless you’re Daffy Duck, your shoes should be round-toed.” That’s the GQ position. Our shoes are all some may see. Save yourself. Save others.
We have to kill it.
You have to help us kill it.
But how?
Every man should consider his own conscience charged with this solemn duty: Don’t wear them, and speak up when you see them being worn.
Talk to your loved ones. Quietly pluck square-toes from closets and make them disappear. Call those congressmen. Suggest that there is a better way, in the form of clean white sneakers. Or maybe a compromise: the subtly “squared-off” dress shoe introduced by London shoemaker George Cleverley in the mid-20th century or the angular shoes you’re just now seeing from Gucci, Margiela, and Balenciaga. Make sure they see the helpful, poignant video about the problem that you’ll find at GQ.com.
And don’t rest until our job is accomplished. We know we won’t.
Let the shape of this shoe—an abomination, a stain—be forever removed from society. (Until it comes back in style, when we’ll be all over it!)
Sincerely,
GQ