Wingtips are the gold standard of older businessmen everywhere. Ask any old guy who used to work in an office. They’ll all tell you the same thing “If you didn’t wear wingtips you weren’t taken seriously.”

Well, wingtips have graduated from the office and their style has branched out into every kind of shoe you can imagine.

What are Wingtips

The decorative dotting that makes a wingtip…a wingtip is called broguing. Broguing gives a shoe a certain panache that plain shoes just don’t have.

Besides a formal business shoe broguing can be found on the cap toes of casual shoes, on boots, and even make their way onto sneakers sometimes.

No matter what kind of shoe you run into you will find broguing makes the shoe more formal than its “un-brogued” counterpart.

How to Style Wingtips

Now that we know that broguing is everywhere we need to figure out how to wear these contraptions.

Any brogued shoe with a sleek outsole will match your favorite suits and dress slacks. A brogued shoe with a thicker outsole perfectly matches your jeans, khakis and cargos. It’s that simple.

Check the profile on the shoe and make sure it matches your clothes.

In finding the right kind of shoe for your foot don’t just blindly buy the first shoes you see. Some shoes have gorgeous profiles but are simply not wide enough for your foot or will never be long enough for your toes.

You need to do some searching. I’ve met many older guys who squeezed their feet into wingtips for the sake of “being taken seriously” and now they’re paying for it in Podiatry expenses.

How to Care for Wingtips

Caring for Wingtips is tricky if you don’t use your head.

When using polish on top calves you have to be very careful to not stuff polish into the holes. If you do you might discolor the inside of the hole and lose the contrast of the colorless leather on the inside of the hole. Now your shoe doesn’t look like it’s brogued…it looks dirty.

All in all just be smart. Don’t just get something because it’s “wingtip-like.” Instead, get shoes with broguing that matches your style and wardrobe.

Pictures of Wingtips

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