The White Sole Argument I Lost to Myself

For most of my adult life, white soles felt like a costume. Like I was dressing as a younger version of myself. The white-soled sneaker had a specific era for me — Air Force 1s, old Puma Clydes, that whole lineage of clean white rubber under suede or leather — and at some point I aged out of it. Not aged out in the bitter sense. Just clocked that I didn’t need to be in those anymore.

The other knock was practical. White soles get filthy fast. They don’t hold up. You spend the first month babying them and the rest of their life regretting them. So between the style problem and the maintenance problem, I had a clean two-part case against white soles, and I stuck to it.

I should also say: I never understood the dressy white-soled sneaker. The leather upper, the white sole, the supposed Italian-ness of it. You’re not playing tennis. You’re trying to make a sneaker look like a dress shoe, or — depending on which direction the designer was facing — a dress shoe look like a sneaker. Either way something feels broken to me. If the case for the shoe is comfort, fine, but I have to think there’s a way to get there without splitting the difference like that. If it works for you, great. I don’t get it.

The one shoe with a white sole I always liked was the Red Wing Classic Moc. Beautiful boot. But a work boot with a white sole? Where exactly are you working? Maybe the point is that the sole turns brown over time and eventually blends in, in which case sure, but I was never going to be the guy mowing the lawn worrying about grass stains on a wedge sole.

And then I needed a slip-on waterproof boot, and the only one I could find in the range I wanted had a white sole. I told myself it was temporary. Cheap, wouldn’t last, served the purpose. Except I ended up liking it. So I bought another pair. Then another. Now I have a couple pairs of work boots with white soles and somehow it stopped bothering me.

The sneakers, though — still a no. I picked up a pair of old-school suede Adidas recently, and they have gum soles, which I’m fine with. Gum soles fit me. The same shoe in white would have felt like I was reaching for something that wasn’t mine anymore.

So I came at white soles backwards. Not through the sneaker door, where they live, but through the work boot door, which I always thought was the wrong room. Maybe that was the room all along. Maybe the sneakers borrowed it from the boots in the first place.