I wish Tabby were here to mock me!
This thread got me thinking. Yesterday, I basked in the foot sweat of my cotton socks, doing basically nothing more strenous than sitting, wishing for wool dress socks. Got me thinking about shoes. Back in the 19th century day, broguing was used in basic shoes- basically brogues are holes in the sides, to let the shoes air out after walking in peat bogs. They were low class functional work shoes.
Fast forward to the 20th century, where, brogue shoes are considered higher class, but are being replaced in the 21st century by more casual shoes because people don't dress up as much. Lot's of high end shoe makers will probably go belly up soon, which is sad. That said- today's brogue shoes are not functional. They are decorative in nature only- holes 1/2 way through the leather with no function other than looks.
So for my latest project, I am punching the holes through and through on a crap pair of wingtips I own. This is a project in the name of SCIENCE to see what happens when the broguing is functional. My hole maker can only reach so far, so I will need to figure out how to reach all the holes, but this should be a fun offshoot of the wool sock thread, which will be made even better if I were to wear wool socks in a dress environment.
To my knowledge, there is very little info on functional brogues. A lot of shoe nerds pontificating, but little action in terms of actually doing it. The issue is even being relegated to revisionalist interpretation where it never happened at all.
Tabby would make some flippant comment ( he actually chastised this specific pair of shoes as coming from Thom McCan), but deep down inside he'd be jealous I beat him to the idea.
