When it comes to colour matching, or colour clash, most people will not think about shoes, especially dress shoes.
Whether they are for men or women, solid colours are the norm. Lady’s shoes are mainly in light colours, and men’s dark. For example, black must be dominant.
The logic behind is easy to understand. Normally, we don’t want shoes to be the focus of attention. Shoes are for the overall clothing matching.
In the long history of men’s dress shoes, there are only two two-tone shoes, one is Spectator and the other is Saddle Oxford.
Spectators are generally used for spring, summer and outdoor banquets. Its English name, Co-respondent indicates that it is very suitable for playboys. The annual horse racing in the UK is the place where these playboys compete for glamour.
Saddle shoes are a legendary object in the United States.
Except these two, two-tone dress shoe is extremely rare.
The American brand J.FitzPatrick incorporate this tricks that sneakers or high fashion brands love to modernise men’s formal dress shoes. Mixing and matching is an easy-to-understand concept, but perfect execution is the place that tests the designer.
First of all, we can see that it is just a small area of colour contrast with some “freshness” effect. The effect of the adding colour may be similar to the decorative diamond or bow on girls’ shoes.
Next, we saw an increase in the area of contrasting colours. At this time, the two-tone feature begins to draw eyeballs. You can know that many people will pay attention to your shoes. Only you know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
The relatively safe way is the so-called transition colour. In the above example, big red and black are obviously colliding, and here we have brown and yellow here, and the contrast is not so fierce.
Of course, the colours with strong contrast are acceptable, but harmony must be considered. In large areas, strong colour contrast may require your clothes to be more vibrant.
And the brand’s favourite colour contrast is the most retro boots. In modern men’s clothing, it is very rare to wear boots. The original function of boots was to keep warm, while the air conditioning in modern cities determines that boots are left to trendy men.
It is this classic shoe that is almost abandoned by society that needs to be restored most, and the way is a large-scale colour contrast. Similarly, the extremely contrasting colour may make the audience of boots more niche, so the choice of two colours can be mild, such as gray, which is a colour that is easier to integrate with other colours than white. At the same time, the change in material can increase the contrast when the colour change is not so intense.
Two-tone is common in clothing, but shoes, especially dress shoes, see very rare examples, so it is especially easy to surprise people.