Allen Edmonds Park Avenue

The Park Avenue is the plainest kind of formal shoe. It is a balmoral oxford, which means the lacing panels are sewn in under the front of the shoe and close edge to edge, and across the toe runs a single straight seam marking the cap. There is no broguing and no decoration. It comes in black or brown calfskin, on a leather sole, and it is built on Allen Edmonds' 65 last, the company's most popular.

Allen Edmonds had been making shoes in Wisconsin for sixty years when it introduced the Park Avenue in 1982. The company began in 1922 in the village of Belgium, where Elbert Allen made men's shoes by hand; in 1931 he took on a salesman, Bill Edmonds, and the name followed. The firm supplied the armed forces in the Second World War and passed from the Allen family in 1980 to John Stollenwerk, who meant to keep making shoes in America while almost every other American maker moved abroad.

The Park Avenue became the company's signature. Allen Edmonds says more than two million pairs have been sold since 1982, that it has more five-star reviews than any other style the company makes, and that several American presidents have worn it. Wikipedia counts four presidents who wore Allen Edmonds at their inaugurations.

The construction is the point of it. The sole is attached by a Goodyear welt stitched the whole way round the shoe, heel included, over a cork bed that moulds to the foot, and the company will take worn pairs back and rebuild them with new soles and cork. Each pair is still finished in Port Washington, Wisconsin, though the business has changed owners several times and now belongs to Caleres. In a trade where the cap-toe oxford is everyone's, this one has been in the catalogue for over forty years.