Dress boot

Dress boots are short leather boots worn by men. Built like dress shoes, but with uppers covering the ankle, versions of the boots are used as an alternative to these in bad weather or rough outdoor situation, and as a traditional option for day time formalwear.

Until the end of the Victorian period, men did not wear shoes (which were reserved for women), preferring only boots during daytime and court slippers (pumps) when eveningwear was worn. At that time, long riding boots were common and dress boots were for more formal occasions, so patent leather was often used, as well as ordinary black calf. Gradually, these boots became more common for formal evening use, so that by the Edwardian era, patent boots were generally worn when there would be no dancing. Patent leather use during day dropped, and formal morning clothes soon incorporated either shoes or plain calf dress boots. In the evening, the wearing of both boots and court slippers similarly declined as shoes came to dominate, though slippers are still worn with white tie.

As the use of riding boots declined with the advent of cars (automobiles), another use for these short boots developed as tougher alternatives to shoes for harsh weather or terrain, where hobnails would originally have been worn with sturdier versions of town boots. Now that shoes are so much more common than boots, and formal clothing is worn so infrequently, this is now the most frequent use of dress boots.

With formalwear, dress boots are now only worn during the day, and are usually now black Oxford boots of Balmoral cut (in the English, not American, sense, i.e. the only seam descending to the welt is that of the toe-cap). The upper is usually softer, made of canvas or suede. Alternatively, the same Balmoral vamp is used with a button-fastened upper instead of using the more modern system of shoe laces. The tolerance for fit with this kind of boot is less, so they are more expensive, though more traditional, and a button-hook on the end of a shoehorn may be needed to do up the buttons. The traditional use of buff for the uppers is rare. The boots sometimes have toe-caps, which can feature a brogued seam, a reference to their original informal use for business.

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Wikipedia