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Tamara Mel­lon, Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer for Jimmy Choo, offers some sound advice on mens’ shoes.

For a good num­ber of years, when I worked on Capi­tol Hill and down­town DC as a lob­by­ist, I was very much into suits, shirts, cuf­flinks, ties, braces (sus­penders) and shoes. When I left DC for a job in New York, the dress code moved from a rather con­ser­v­a­tive, suit-every-day affair, to one that was truly busi­ness casual. Think: nice slacks and open shirts or merino sweaters. I got back into suits, some­what, when I returned to DC and landed another leg­isla­tive job. The job was in a fed­eral gov­ern­ment agency, so the dress was prob­a­bly even more con­ser­v­a­tive (and a lit­tle less pol­ished) than what you might see on the Hill or down­town. Nev­er­the­less, it was still shirt and tie, and occa­sion­ally suites. Three years ago, I moved to a less vis­i­ble part of the agency, where the dress is … how shall I say this … com­fort­able. There are extremes in my office, but for the most part, it’s loosely busi­ness casual. In the three years that I’ve been in my cur­rent office, I would say that my dress has made a notice­able turn toward the casual.

I am okay with the shift, for the most part. How­ever, I do peri­od­i­cally strug­gle with the lack of “nice” clothes that I own and wear. I’m not nec­es­sar­ily caught up on clothes, but I’ve always liked to dress well — even if it’s casu­ally. This video par­tic­u­larly res­onated with me because of an expe­ri­ence I had a few weeks ago. I was in New York with my wife. I specif­i­cally recall my wife’s man­ager glanc­ing down at my shoes while we were talk­ing. When she turned away to speak to some­one, my eyes imme­di­ately dropped to my shoes. Gasp! They looked com­pletely busted! Well, maybe not busted, but just blah. Though not dusty, my shoes looked a bit worn, and the shape of the toe area had fallen a bit. The hor­ror! I felt so self-conscious about my shoes that I stopped in a store and bought a new pair (casual, brown suede wing-tips). Had it not been rain­ing, I would have worn them out of the store like I did when I was a kid.

I am not sug­gest­ing that peo­ple need to run out and buy a bunch of stuff. (I’ve been doing a lot of read­ing and soul-searching about min­i­mal­ism lately.) What I do rec­om­mend, though, –  par­tic­u­larly to my male friends — is to tak­ing a good, hon­est look at your shoes. Keep them clean and pol­ished. Keep in mind, your shoes don’t need to have a mir­ror shine to be pol­ished, but there is not rea­son for dusty shoes. Look at the heels, welts, soles, as well as the shape of the toe and vamp.