The sole survivors

An increasingly casual attitude to what we wear has given rise to the so-called dress sneaker’ but proper gentlemen's shoes will never go out of fashion

- Harry Wallop

WE ARE NOW four years on from the first COVID-19 lockdown, and for many towns and cities life will never be quite the same again. The work-fromhome revolution  even if that involves working from the kitchen table only on Fridays  is here to stay. Some city centres, their offices and cafes, are unlikely to recover; some commuter towns have boomed thanks to people taking a break from their Zoom calls to pop out to their local shops.

One subtle but crucial change, however, is less well documented: footwear. Even those people who have returned to the office full-time have adopted a more casual attitude to what they wear. Specifically, the men of Britain have embraced something the Americans call – and I feel queasy writing this phrase – the ‘dress sneaker’. If you have never come across this particular item, you spend no time in the office hotspots of Britain. Wherever there is a Pret, be it in Hampstead or Harrogate, there will be men dashing to their places of work in dress sneakers.