My Lifelong Love Affair with Gucci Loafers

I don't remember when I got my first pair of Gucci loafers.  I know that it was when I was at prep school in the mid-1970s, at Saint Grottlesex, either during my junior or my senior year.  But I can't exactly pinpoint the date.  It's been so long that I just don't remember.

The iconic, classic Gucci loafer

Gucci loafers.  I'm referring to the classic, old-fashioned, pre-Tom-Ford-era ones, with snaffle-bits, favored by slippery-slope investment bankers, louche Euro-trash, and the denizens of Kennedy-era Southampton and Palm Beach and their social and stylistic offspring.  Footwear fashions may come and go, but the classic Gucci loafer remains essentially unchanged for more than half a century, and rightly so, because it is a highly profitable mainstay of the firm's footwear empire.  Leaders at Gucci blessedly know not to kill the golden goose of the House of Gucci.  They might play with it, as they do, by offering variations on it, but they haven't yet killed the original.  And I hope they never do, at least during my lifetime, as I plan on wearing the classic Gucci loafer to my grave . . .

Gucci loafers have been a staple of my footwear wardrobe ever since I first slipped my feet into a pair as a teenager, my fevered heart pounding with anticipation that, yes, my dream of owning a pair was finally coming true.  I had coveted Gucci loafers for long enough that when it came time for me to actually try on a pair to buy I felt like Cinderella confronted with the glass slipper brought 'round after the ball.  I knew they were meant to be mine.

A 1970s preppy hottie, wearing Gucci loafers
Photograph courtesy of Google Images

I had to put up a fight to get them, though.  Neither of my parents wore Gucci loafers when I was growing up, and they disapproved of them.  My parents were far too conservative to wear such shoes, and considered them flashy, shockingly expensive, and downright frivolous, given who wore them—people of suspect morals and spendthrift ways.

People just like me, as it turned out.

I first became aware of Gucci loafers when I went away to boarding school.  It was there, at Saint Grottlesex, that I encountered them on the feet of the fast-living, unnervingly sophisticated, more-than-worldly, Manhattan-raised offspring of families with boldfaced names, limitless resources, and house accounts (remember those?) in stores stocked with expensive European-made goods.  Remember, this was back in the 1970s, long before every major city in America became over-retailed with specialty stores and shopping malls clogged with purveyors of luxury goods, all to be had with just a Visa card and a credit line.  In those days it was hard to find a store in America outside of Manhattan that stocked Gucci loafers.

The flagship Gucci store in Manhattan, before it moved to the Trump Tower
Photograph courtesy of Google Images

My schoolmates at Saint Grottlesex who wore Gucci loafers (a relatively small minority of the school's population, I admit) seemed impossibly glamorous and sophisticated to me, and I wanted to be like them.  And that meant I needed to ratchet up my wardrobe in order to fit in with them.  I needed a pair of Gucci loafers.

Douglas Fairnbanks, Jr., wearing Gucci loafers
Photograph courtesy of Google Images

"You want what?!" I remember MD asking me when I told her I wanted a pair of Guccis, instead of the much more reasonable and mundane Bass Weejuns she was prepared to buy me to take back to boarding school for the fall semester of my junior year.  Except that we didn't call it "Junior Year" at Saint Grottlesex; we called it the "Fifth Form," in the traditions of the English public schools that Saint Grottlesex (and others like it) followed.

"Are you crazy?!" she said. "Have you any idea how much those ridiculous shoes cost?!  Forget it!"

Brand-new and begging to be worn . . .

At the time I didn't know how much Gucci loafers cost, except that they were expensive (they had to be, considering those I knew who wore them).  But I was determined to own a pair, despite my mother's objections and her unwillingness to foot the bill.  I don't know whether it was then or within the next year, but I somehow scraped together enough money to buy myself a pair—black leather ones with brushed brass snaffle-bits.  I was beside myself with excitement when I brought the shoebox home, the forbidden treasure nestled inside, wrapped in tissue paper.  And when I slipped them on my feet, alone in my bedroom, I felt flushed with pleasure, but nervous, too, knowing that I had done something rash and extravagant and that my parents would disapprove when they discovered what I had done.

Even though I took no end of heat from MD for squandering what little money I had on a pair of shoes I could ill afford, I was thrilled to have them.  I felt as if I'd crossed over to the other side, to where the fast and exotic kids from New York at Saint Grottlesex lived and played.  I no longer felt like a suburban hick, staring through the window at the fun happening inside.  I was inside.  Well, sort of—at least I now had the same shoes as those inside wore . . .

The Gucci store in Florence, in the 1950s
Photograph courtesy of Google Images

And I've been happily wearing Gucci loafers ever since, thank you.  In fact, I'm wearing a pair of them right now, as I write this essay for you, Dear Reader.

The classic Gucci loafer is deliciously comfortable and marvelous looking in a sporty, horsey way, and pretty much "goes" with anything, in my view.  I wear them with suits, with khakis, with jeans, and with shorts.  I draw the line with black tie, though, but I didn't used to when I was younger, before I owned embroidered velvet slippers, or Belgians, or kidskin dancing pumps to go with my evening wear.  But that's another story for another evening, I suppose.

I wear Gucci loafers everywhere: to the office, while walking the dog, out to eat in the city, or knocking about in the country on a summer weekend's afternoon.  I wear them so often that I sometimes absentmindedly find myself wearing them while engaged in impromptu outdoor weekend chores or projects—hopefully (but not always) beat-up old ones, and not a fresh pair, just brought home from the store.  In cool weather I wear Gucci loafers with socks, but in warm weather I mostly wear them sockless—that is, assuming my ankles have the barest blush of a tan, a requirement to carry the sockless look off, in my view.

A mess of our worn-out Gucci loafers

Between the two of us, Boy and I own dozens and dozens of pairs of Gucci loafers in various stages of wear.  It is almost embarrassing.  Part of the reason we have so many pairs, though, is because we haven't gotten rid of our worn-out ones when we've bought fresh ones to replace them.  Boy has a number of what he calls "Gardening Guccis" that he keeps at Darlington, shoes that are so worn and scuffed that they really aren't suitable to wear off the property, but which are wonderfully comfortable and admirably suited to wearing while—well—gardening or doing painting projects.

Boy's mud-caked Gardening Guccis

In addition to his collection of classic Gucci loafers, Boy also has a number of pairs of what he calls his "Ghetto Guccis," as they were clearly designed to appeal to the Hip Hop set and are much fun to wear at parties.

A party favorite in three different colors of leather!

Me?  I stick with the old-fashioned, tried-and-true, classic Gucci loafers with the snaffle-bits, in either brown or black leather.  Sometmes I might get a pair with red and green ribbon beneath the bits, or I'll try some sleek driving shoes; more recently I bought a pair with bamboo "bits" instead of metal snaffle-bits.

The classic, with a twist

I even have a couple of pairs from the 1990s that were so of-the-moment when I bought them as to be unwearable today.  They languish in my closets, unworn.  Most of the Gucci loafers I own, though, are the classic style that looks good on the feet of anyone from a fourteen-year-old boy (should he be so lucky), out goofing around with friends, to an eighty-year-old codger out for a swell lunch with a scrumptious niece or granddaughter.

The look, the dog, the loafer . . .

In short, I love me my Gucci loafers.  And I'll never stop wearing them, either.

Tell me, when did you get your first pair of Gucci loafers?

All photographs, except where noted, by Boy Fenwick