The sports program that I was watching had three men who were talking about football. As a former designer, Art Director and Creative Director in the advertising departments of three department stores, I am always looking at the clothes and shoes that television personalities wear. I was once challenged with the responsibility of making sure that the models who wore the clothes that the department stores hoped to sell were wearing clothing that would appeal to the buying public. Actually: The buyers acquired the clothing. I chose the models who would look the best wearing it. On the sports program that I was watching, all three of the men were smartly dressed in typical business wear, and all three outfits were accessorized with big white shoes.
I have a lot of shoes; some might say that I have a shoe fetish. When I was 15 years old, I admired the shoes that my cousin’s boyfriend wore. The boyfriend was a salesman at a shoe store in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and my passion for the shoes that he wore and sold convinced me to buy a pair of Bally shoes, for which I paid $75. I was making $1 per hour as a page in the closed stacks of the University of Pittsburgh library, so I saved for a long time to get those $75 shoes. I also had them for more than 25 years, and in that time, the Ballys were joined by a lot of other shoes. In the 1990s, when I was living in St. Louis Missouri, I would drive to Indianapolis to visit my two youngest children. Halfway between St. Louis and Indy, there was a Nike Outlet store and once I discovered it, I would stop and buy a pair of shoes. I made the mistake of taking my kids with me on one buying trip, and both Lauren and Chris whined as I walked up and down the aisles, looking for shoes to buy. I never went into the store and came out empty-handed, but not once in all those trips, did I ever buy a pair of big white shoes. A recent perusal of my closets and shoe shelves showed that I have 8 pairs of shoes of various colors that all have white soles. (Bonus: When I did that research, I found a pair of shoes that I had forgotten I had!) The closest shoe to “Big White” is a pair of Adidas shoes. They are white, but they have the three bold black stripes that are the trademark of the Adidas brand.
I don’t know when the trend of wearing big white shoes with business clothing began, but it has taken a firm hold on the fashion decisions of TV show hosts and guests. When I was young, white shoes were not commonly sought out because they required too much care; it was hard to keep white shoes white. Billy “White Shoes” Johnson was a wide receiver and return specialist who dyed his shoes white on a dare when he was in high school, and went on to play professional football with Washington, Atlanta, and Houston. He was always identified as “White Shoes,” but I don’t know if he wore white shoes off the field.
I recently went to see my youngest granddaughter perform as a cheerleader at the Ransburg YMCA on Shortridge Road in Irvington. She lined up with her cheer-mates, who wore red and white uniforms with black shirts, and red and white striped socks. Myah’s finishing touch to her uniform is a pair of big white shoes. So, there’s that.
cjon3acd@att.net