Recent content by The Shabby Professor

And SOLVED! I've been working on figuring this out for days, finally remembered the name right after posting: Stafford Gunners from JC Penney. Thanks for reading, if you got this far.

Back in November or so, there was a discussion here about a department-store brand pair of dress boots. They were cap toe, possibly quarter-brogue, offered in both a brown and black, and had a vaguely military name (Commander springs to mind, but google isn't helping). The MSRP was around...

Thanks for the helpful advice given by those genuinely interested in helping. As for certain others, if I needed your sort of flip and insulting "advice", I'd head over to Reddit.

My feet are illegal under the Geneva Conventions. I had some Birkenstock sandals a few years ago, and when I took them in for their version of recrafting, the saleswoman said she'd never seen the cork turn completely black. However, I've just taken the plunge and bought some AE McAllisters...

I love shocking socks. My job doesn't have a dress code, so faculty clothes run from three-piece suits to shorts and polos, but while I like to keep my clothing in the mid-high range of that, nothing makes me feel better on my limited budget than something like black wool trousers and spitshined...

If you do a google search for "men's blue dress shoes" and go to images, they come up about fourth. The site lists them as "Luxury mens goodyear shoes navy blue mens dress shoes italian handmade purple leather shoes for man elegant mens oxfords shoes" and they ship from somewhere in China, so...

Good on him for serving and continuing to serve, but when your job is mostly ceremonial, you should get it right. It's easier to dress down anything short of a tuxedo than it is to magic up a coat or tie. I'll bet his emergency kit improves from here on out.

Do you mean "undyed" or "undiluted"? I've done some plastic painted (I think they called it "permashine" or something) shoes from a reddish to a nice dark wood color, but I just used the dye as it came in the bottle, didn't know to use dilutions of it.

Right, thanks to all for the quick education. The Japanese have some different ideas about style than Westerners do, so it can be hard to tell where something falls on the style spectrum in the outside world.

This might just be a Japan thing, but for the last few years, quite a few of the men's shoe stores have been carrying a variety of blue (or purple, I'm a touch color-blind) dress shoes. They're available in a variety of price points, so I don't think they're just for the younger "disposable...

I'm not sure of my schedule quite yet, but I live quite near Osaka, so if you've got anything planned (late afternoon or evening), I'll do my best to make it. -TSP

Typical of my luck, the Regal Shoes Japan site doesn't show the ones that I bought. Anyway, I'd rather educate myself on leather for the future, so that I'm not dependent on whatever word the advertising department decided to stick into the description. However, I'd like to offer my thanks...

Funny you should mention that. I'd been looking at shoes in that particular shop on and off for a few weeks, trying to decide what I liked best. The day I actually bought them, the clerk on duty assiduously busied himself tidying up in whatever corner of the store I wasn't. Fortunately, the...

Sorry, I seem to have phrased things badly. The shoes in question are Regal, the only model information I have is on the box where it says "811BR AL", and they ran around 200USD (I'm in Japan) The off-brand shoes I was referring to are my other dress shoes, which were considerably cheaper...

I think I know the answer to this one, but I don't want to screw up my shoes without checking first. I got a new pair of Regal dress shoes a while ago, and they've had nothing but a few coats of creme shoe polish. However, I noticed that the creases that are forming are kind of...sparkly. I...