Ben Kriz, a men’s fashion writer, remembers the point at which the sneakers he wore to the office no longer seemed cool.
“All the older guys at the office started wearing sneakers with their suit trousers and sport jackets,” said Kriz, who was then in his 20s.
So he opted to distinguish himself – by donning a pair of buffed and burnished loafers.
Kriz is, by profession, geared toward staying ahead of the trends. But young people in workplaces everywhere are catching up to him.
After years of flagrantly casual office attire that followed workers back to the office after the pandemic, young people are now increasingly going in the opposite direction – turning up for work in dress shoes.
Earlier this year, Esquire described the trend as the loafer’s “big generational shift”, describing how younger consumers “were bypassing sneakers in growing numbers”.
And in January, The Times UK deemed 2026 “the year of the loafer”. Derbies and oxfords have also unexpectedly become hip.
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At the same time, wearing sneakers to work – whether the upscale brands like APC, Common Projects, Zegna and Maison Margiela or the classic Adidas and Nike – has become a sign of something else entirely.
“It’s the classic generational reaction: If your boss comes in wearing sneakers, the natural reaction is to do something different,” Kriz said.
“It’s like what happened with jeans.”
While the office sneaker might still seem to some a way to modishly break stodgy business attire rules, younger workers have been clear on the point – kicks at work now scan as uncool.
Big sneaker brands are feeling the pain.
In a January report, Bank Of America concluded that the sneaker industry was entering a period of slowing growth and possibly decline, even downgrading Adidas, the maker of Stan Smiths, by two notches to a “sell” rating.
The surging interest in formal footwear fashions has simultaneously been a boon for both high-end luxury retailers and heritage brands with classic shoe offerings, like Allen Edmonds, a Wisconsin-based retailer.
Nick Wooster, the brand’s consulting creative director, said that the company has “absolutely” seen a recent increase in interest in its handmade leather loafers and derbies among younger customers.
“Sneakers dominated for a long time, and they are not going anywhere,” he said.
“But a great loafer or derby works in a meeting, it works at dinner, it works on a plane. Classic shoes tend to do that better than anything else.”
Even sneaker brands are trying to be more dressy. Brendan Dunne, the senior director of customer community and engagement at footwear resale site StockX, said that while “we’re definitely seeing a shift” that has brought formal styles back to the office, it’s “a little more nuanced than just consumers giving up sneakers to go after loafers”.
In fact, he said, “sneaker brands themselves are absorbing formal aesthetics”, releasing more formal versions of their own hallmark shoes.
Puma unveiled a variation on a classic Mary Jane in 2025; both Adidas and Nike have released low-profile ballet flats; and a number of the top sports brands have gone all-in on patent leather shoes that skirt the line between sneaker and something more formal.
“I think the appetite for something different, and in many cases dressier, is real,” Dunne said, but some consumers are “still reaching for it through sneaker brands”.
He pointed to the New Balance 1906L, its “sneaker loafer”, as a case in point.
StockX has seen more than 15,000 sales of the model since it was introduced last year (although some critics will claim that the so-called snoafer was a flop).
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“What we’re seeing right now is something we’ve seen before,” said Matt Halfhill, the founder and CEO of Nice Kicks, a media company that focuses on sneaker culture, said that, since about 2023, in offices all over the US.
“We’ve had this quiet luxury, leather loafer, growing up thing,” but he predicted that, as in the past, younger consumers would eventually return to sneakers again.
Yang-Yi Goh, the senior style editor at menswear magazine GQ, said that after the pandemic, “people just wanted to feel a little more dressed and put together”, particularly at the office.
“I think over the last half decade or so we’ve seen more and more young men investing in loafers, derbies and the like,” Goh said.
So much so that in one story for GQ he recently edited, a writer said he was looking to give up his loafers. He’d noticed all the guys he was with were wearing matching shoes. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
