Beef & Broc... Loafers?
Beef and broccoli: It's what's for dinner. Especially if you live in Noo Yawk, where "Beef and Broccoli" shoes are as much a cornerstone of local footwear culture as "Wheat" Timbs and crisp white Uptowns (Nike Air Force 1s, for you tourists).
The "Beef and Broccoli" colorway, so named for the American Chinese take-out staple, typically describes shoes with brown uppers and black soles. It's homage'd so fervently that you'd think that all the brands battling to best represent New York also serve General Tso's on the side.
Originally applied to hiking shoes, Beef and Broccoli has become such a broad descriptor that there aren't really many brown 'n black shoes that it isn't applied to.
So much so, in fact, that these Beef and Broccoli loafers aren't even the first of their kind.
Heck, Japanese footwear label The Kenford Fineshoes, who made the above, isn't even the first to loaferize the Beef 'n Broc. Once again, the New Balance sneaker loafer is a pioneer.
You are not familiar with The Kenford Fineshoes, by the way. I know you're not. I know that because no one who doesn't regularly patronize stores like Journal Standard, one of the outsized Japanese retailers, is familiar with The Kenford Fineshoes.
These Beef 'n Broc loafers, a custom order for Journal Standard, are as good an entry point as any, though.
There's an entire class of upstart loafer labels in America (Blackstock & Weber) and Europe (Vinny's), so why not Japan? Not that The Kenford Fineshoes, which specializes in budget-conscious leather shoes, is lacking company, though its wares are certainly less expressive than those of, say, Blohm.
Still, I'm tickled that not only are there Beef and Broccoli loafers, thus rendering the world's softest shoe in a colorway so hard that it's a reference point for artists as disparate as Gang Starr and Meek Mill, but that these particular loafers will never make it to the streets of Manhattan.
This is cultural admiration from afar, so diffused that the result is almost entirely divorced from its origin. Not that the shoes aren't nice, mind you.
