Someone walked into the store last week, phone raised so I could see the photo he was holding. It was a picture of someone’s foot on some beach somewhere wearing the sandal some influencer had posted last month. “Got anything like this?” My sales guy instincts paused for a second to look at it, then came back with the truth. That sandal was a $40 nylon strap on a foam sole dressed up with handsome photography and good lighting. “The only reason that looks expensive is that it’s been Photoshopped and you’re standing on a beach probably not working an eight-foot counter for ten hours a day like most of my customers do.” He left with a pair of leather instead that he texted me two weeks later had already molded perfectly to his foot in a way that “those lifestyle brand ones would never do.”
See that’s the problem when you ask “what’s in style.” It frames shoes as if they’re something to care about when style is the end goal. Because let me tell you what most guys care about when they’re buying sandals. Comfort. Durability.
Style becomes this nebulous dusting on top of the things we actually care about, which are Doing The Job and Doing It Well. Hell, I’ve seen influencer run-on sentences take the sandal conversation online from “sport sandal is back” to “sport sandal was never good and never will be” at least four times since fall of 2020 and not one of those swings bore any resemblance to what holds up on an actual foot covering actual ground miles at a time. Let’s skip past trends and get into what’s actually worth your money. It’s a shorter list than whatever Etsy thinks you need this summer.
Let me tell you why the trend cycle is lying to you about what actually matters
The issue I have with asking “what’s in style” when it comes to sandals specifically is that it presupposes sandals are a trendy, seasonal accessory you rotate like you would a graphic tee. When I look at the customers coming through my door on footwear shopping trips, they wear sandals year in, year out. They’re not buying a new pair every couple of months for each trend folder they land in on Pinterest. They’re buying sandals to last. Three years. Five years. They wear them until the strap breaks and tosses the footbed into the garbage.
Customer walks in, broad shouldered, wide feet, tells me he’d bought a pair of those flat slide sandals you’ve seen everyone posting over summer after their nephew said they were “the ones right now.” Got through six weeks before the footbed had completely molded to the shape of ground he was walking on, which was basically asphalt at that point through quarter inch of foam. They were tagged as men’s size 12, footbed measured two full centimeters shorter than men’s size 12 in a similar style from a company who’s been making their version of that sandal for fifteen years. Not user error, not a rounding difference. An actual disparity in size between the shoe your website says you’re buying and the sandal you actually fit your foot into that has almost no margin for error because sandal don’t have[](Footnote-Not-an-upper? )ups to adjust the fit like sneakers do. Slide sandals are forgiving of shitty sizing because there’s no upper to account for. If the footbed’s off by even a fraction of an inch your foot’s going to be slopping around in the sandal all day every day and you’ll know within the first week.
That right there is my entire problem with looking at sandals through a style lens versus buying something that fits you and holding onto it. Trends change what goes on top of the sandal. They can’t change the fact that foam sole is still going to compress flat within one season on most “lifestyle brand” sandals and that footbed is still going to assume you have feet narrower than half the men buying the damn things.
I learned this mostly buying sandals for myself. Here’s what’s actually worth money
The leather sandals with a genuine contoured cork or cork composite footbed are worth the price tag almost every time. Seriously. There’s a reason corks mold to your foot over those first few weeks of wear instead of just collapsing like that dollar bin foam. I’m on sandals I bought myself for summer going on four now, resoled once, that fit both my feet better than any sandal straight out of the box ever will because they’ve learned the actual shape of my foot. Not “learned” like some consumer magically customer-service word bullshit. Learned like the physical footbed has molded to the contours of your foot.
Sport sandals don’t get enough love, either, but only the ones with a mechanical adjustable strap system and actual arch support built into the footbed, not those flat slides that masquerade as sporty because they thought wrapping some webbing around the footbed looked cool. I’ve got a pair I wear exclusively for walking my dog on dirt paths through the woods because that triple-point strap adjustment keeps them from sliding up and down your foot the way slides will regardless of how many adjustment notches they tag on. I wrote those dudes off for years because they weren’t cute enough to live near me and didn’t realize I was wrong until I finally wore a pair that did everything right through an entire summer.
I will say what I will never recommend, trends coming or not, are sandals where the shoe size printed on the tag doesn’t actually match the length of the footbed when you compare it to your foot on a ruler.
Dude walked in last month who’d bought a pair online because “it was his size” wide enough to fit his foot but brought them back because the heel was hanging off the back by half an inch. Was actually built for a men’s size 12, despite being sold in a men’s size 13, footbed just measured shorter than our sizing chart would expect based on the tag. Brands do that shit. Sells small in one area to make the rest of their sizes feel less generous by comparison. Doesn’t matter who you are or what’s stylish about sandals right now. If you aren’t checking the footbed measures up to your actual foot you’re asking to get burned.
So when you ask me “what’s trendy,” I’m going to be honest with you and say it doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does. Get the leather pair with the cork molded footbed, get the sport sandal with the adjustable straps if you know you’ll actually be putting miles on them. Check the footbed measures up to your foot before you buy because even trends die eventually, and you should be able to wear sandals until yours does.
Terry works a menswear shop floor in Newcastle and is a big and tall specialist himself. He writes about sizing that holds up, measures things before he believes the label, and has strong opinions about the phrase relaxed fit.
