The Wingtip: Traditional and Defiant

Recently, The New York Times released an article stating that wingtip shoes have once again become stylish. The classic profile with expansive double arches over the toe are obviously classic and traditional, but are they now edgy, as well?

Until reading this article I had no idea how utterly complicated wingtips can be. There is an entire world and history of wingtips fans who have developed all sorts of specific terms to describe the smallest nuances, like how many tiny perforations there are in the arch.

I think the wingtip is a very clever shoe. It is simultaneously traditional and defiant. It bucks the common sloppiness of modern style. If retro-edge was a word, that would be the perfect way to describe their swing back into the good graces of popular culture.

The wingtip, or brogue, is above all a debonair shoe. It does not matter whether some nubby hipster is wearing them with his skinny jeans or if they’re spotted cozying up to the hemline of a well-tailored pant leg. The pronounced and pointy tip leads the way to articulating a refined, purposeful profile. The wingtip is no everyday, Sunday School dress shoe. It is the best friend of the gentleman, the pilot’s favorite wing man, the first crisp flush of winter wind, the clink of ice in a glass of scotch. Purchasing a pair could be the perfect way to embrace a new phase in life, guiding your footsteps in the direction of civility.

Lingering in my mind from my time in college not many years ago is the memory of a dashing Honduran with long black hair. He was cavalier and poetic. In the beginning I often spied him serenading girls with his beat-up guitar, sitting on an Indian blanket, his hair hanging long and his eyes and mouth dripping with the kind of romance only Latin men know.

Later, he became more serious about his studies and his personal style transformed slightly. He maintained a vagabond hippie air, but his hair was pulled back in a pony tail and clacking below his tapered black pants were a pointy pair of black wingtips. Back then I thought little of this interesting choice in shoes, but having watched his life take shape over the years-- he now teaches classics-- I realize his wingtips were an alarmingly accurate indicator of the new purpose he had found in life. Somewhere between crooning Spanish love songs and reading Heidegger he had discovered a new resolve, simultaneously traditional and defiant.