Wear Brown Shoes Day

What the day is

Wear Brown Shoes Day is observed on December 4. It sounds like nothing at all, and it happens to touch one of the more durable class markers in professional dress.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented. The convention it pushes against is documented thoroughly.

British menswear held a rule usually summarized as no brown in town. Brown shoes belonged to the country and to daytime; black belonged to the city, to business and to formal occasions. The logic began as practical, since brown hides mud and country wear took harder use, but it hardened into a signal of whether someone had been taught the rules in the first place.

It survived far longer than anyone would guess. A 2016 report on social mobility in the United Kingdom examined recruitment at investment banks and found candidates being assessed against exactly this sort of code, with brown shoes worn to an interview cited as a marker that someone was not from the expected background. The finding drew attention because it showed a rule with no functional purpose still filtering people out of jobs decades after anybody could explain what it was for.

American practice diverged and was always more relaxed, though the distinction surfaces in odd places. Naval aviators were issued brown shoes while surface officers wore black, and the two groups were referred to by that difference for most of the twentieth century.

On the clothes themselves, brown is the more useful color. It works with navy and with most grays, and it reads as less severe in daylight, which covers most of what people actually wear suits for.

How to take part

• Wear brown shoes, particularly with navy, which is the pairing the old rule most wrongly forbade.
• Keep black for genuinely formal occasions and funerals, where it still matters.
• Condition and polish them. Brown leather shows neglect far more readily than black.
• Notice the dress codes at your own workplace that nobody can justify when asked directly.
• If you interview people, ask yourself what you are actually assessing.