22 Comments
 

Wearing brown shoes with a grey or navy suit is totally fine. But would caution wearing lighter brown / tan shoes with a darker suit as the contrast might be too strong and lighter shoes in general are less formal than darker shoes. Obviously never wear brown shoes with a black suit. On a related note, WSO seems to have this weird rule against wearing black suits in the office. Nothing wrong with a black suit and would recommend it for your first one since it is the hardest to fuck up and can wear pretty much any tie (not that this is common any more).

 
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Black suits are for funerals and you'll absolutely stick out wearing one. Get a navy suit. It's the most versatile. Next best is charcoal grey.

 

Black is just not a versatile color at all for a suit. For most people in most situations it just looks too severe and will have way too strong of a contrast between it and whatever tie / shirt you wear. Imagine wearing a black suit outside during a wedding, it just won't work -- you'll look like a waiter. If you wear it at work it looks too severe. Just stick with solid navy, charcoal gray, or medium gray. I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where black would be the clear better option than navy. Maybe if you're at some cool club somewhere but even still.

 

The only men who wear black suits during the day are undertakers and limo drivers — and clueless summer interns who were raised by single mothers. The crappy clothes shows what happens when you grow up without strong male authority figures.

 

The Brits are all about no brown shoes etc. The city of London and canary Wharf is practically black shoes only. Business Insider did a funny piece on this a few years ago. They took photos of those areas and virtually no one in a suit had brown shoes. 

 

It's fine and this is more UK focused advice. Just as long as they're a very dark brown / burgundy. The whole "light brown shoes and medium blue suit" look just isn't good.

 

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