What to Look for in a Pair of Oxford Shoes
Quality leather: The uppers should be made of high-quality, full-grain leather without blemishes or grain correction (the industry term for sanding the leather to remove imperfections from lower-quality hides).
Sole construction: Quality Oxford shoes will have its sole either Goodyear welted or Blake stitched, both of which allow for cobblers to resole them, thereby extending the shoes’ lifespan significantly. Each pair on our Best Oxfords list is resoleable, so you can stride knowing that those hard-earned bucks you coughed up are good for several rounds.
Good fit: While most shoes are made on a mass scale to fit as wide of a customer base as possible, artisanal and independent shoemakers will make custom shoe lasts for their clientele to ensure a completely bespoke fitting experience.
Fancy details: Steven Taffel, owner of NYC shoe emporium Leffot, says top-tier Oxfords involve a great deal of handmade details, “meticulous finishing such as hand burnishing, beveled waists, closed channel soles, clean sole edges. Flawless stitching, tight, and even, with high SPI (stitches per inch) especially visible on the welt (sole).” Much of that artisanship is seen on the inside of the shoe, with details like full leather linings, cork footbeds for comfort and a custom fit, and steel shanks for support.
The right price: Leather dress shoes like Oxfords lately fall into one of two camps: the affordable direct-to-consumer brands, like Meermin and Beckett Simonon, that can manufacture fairly solid shoes at a $200-$300 range, thanks to scale, simplicity, and globalized manufacturing. We find that anything less isn’t worth your time or money. The next tier starts around $400 and rises to about $800, and tends to feature noted American, British, and European brands—your Aldens, Leffots, Crockett & Jones, etc. You’ll start to find some hand-finished details and truly high quality leather, as well as construction in their home countries. Beyond that, you get into the true masters of the craft, like John Lobb, where shoes start at four figures, custom is on the table, and anything can be had…for a price.
What’s the Difference Between an Oxford, Derby, and Blucher?
Oxfords, derbies, and bluchers (rhymes with futures) are close cousins, with a similar look but slightly different constructions. It goes like this:
Oxfords have a closed lacing system (the two sides will touch, or come close), with eyelets punched directly into the “vamp” (the term for the piece of leather covering the upper part of the shoe).
Derbies and bluchers, on the other hand, both have an open lacing system, with eyelets punched into a pair of leather pieces attached to the vamp. On a derby, those pieces (known as quarters) wrap all the way around the back of the shoe. As a result, derbies and bluchers tend to be more relaxed, while Oxfords have a narrower, more formal look.
What Should You Wear With Oxford Shoes?
Oxford are one of the more formal dress shoes, and they’re designed to pair with pristine tailoring, from suits to tuxes. But there’s rule that they can only be worn that way. Suede and brogueing pull Oxfords a little more toward the casual end of the spectrum, and will look the part with chinos and jeans and a blazer. Shiny patent leather is almost exclusively for black tie, unless you’re really going for something funky.
What Are the Different Types of Oxford Shoes?
By now, shoemakers have been riffing on the Oxford’s essential structure for a couple of hundred years, regularly adding new versions along the way. Here are the ones you’re most likely to encounter:
- The Brogue: Any shoe with those little dots punched in the leather, usually around the toe area. These were initially a functional feature that allowed water to drain out of the shoes after a walk through a wet Scottish bog, but are now purely decorative.
- The Wingtip: Brogues with a distinctive W-shaped piece of leather stitched across the toe. All wingtips are brogues, but not all brogues are wingtips.
- The Cap-Toe: As the name suggests, these versatile Oxfords are distinguished by a leather cap over the toe.
- The Wholecut: An Oxford with an upper made from a single piece of leather with a seam at the back, which gives it a sleeker, more formal look.
- The Seamless: Like a wholecut Oxford but without the seam, which makes it just a little bit fancier than its wholecut counterparts.
- The Saddle: A casual member of the Oxford family that features a contrast-colored piece of leather over the middle (and sometimes on the heel) that lends it a significantly sportier vibe.
- The Kiltie: Every crew has its wild card, and the Kiltie marches to the beat of its own drum thanks to a fringed piece of leather stitched over the laces.
How We Test and Review Products
Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.
Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.
How We Make These Picks
We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.
To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.
We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.
Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.
Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)