Tassel Loafer - the loafers with tassels at the front
Tassel loafers have a decorative lace-like tie that ends at the front with tassels. This makes them quite unusual shoes.
Example variant
Light-brown tassel loafer made of embossed leather
Here we have a pair of very nice casual loafers where pretty much everything comes together harmoniously for a relaxed look:
- light color of the leather: cognac
- medium-strong embossing of the leather, with a bit of depth
- decorative seam on the vamp at the front, running along the instep
The decorative lacing of the tassel loafer fits in quite well and, in my view, pushes the shoe even more into the casual category.
What’s also interesting about this shoe is that the upper leather is quite heavily pigmented. That makes the leather not quite as interesting, but it does offer fairly good protection—another plus point for casual wear.
Special features
Originally, a tassel loafer is defined as a loafer by the following three characteristics:
- two eponymous tassels at the front of the shoe
- a decorative, lace-like tie suggested by a leather lace running around the shoe
- U-shaped decoration at the front in the area of the instep
Nowadays, however, the first feature alone—those two tassels near the top at the front of the shoe—is usually enough to make a loafer a tassel loafer. The decorative lacing suggested by the leather lace running around the shoe can be omitted, as can the U-shaped decoration. The loafer will still be recognized as a tassel loafer solely by its tassels attached at the front. At this point, I’m more pragmatic myself than I am with other models.
Personally, I like the complete tassel loafer—including the thin leather lace and the U-shaped decoration—more than the tassel loafer in its minimal variant. For me, the leather lace is an additional decoration that I don’t otherwise see on any other shoe, and it makes the tassel loafer even nicer to look at. This further sets it apart from other loafer models.
History
The first step toward the invention of the tassel loafer was taken by Hungarian actor Paul Lukas, who was living in the USA during World War II. At some point he brought a pair of Oxford shoes from Europe that had a special lacing: the ends of the shoelaces were shaped like tassels. Apparently he liked these shoes so much that in 1948 he commissioned a New York shoemaker to create his own new version of them.
By various detours, the order ultimately ended up with the American company Alden, which produced the model known today as a slip-on shoe with two large tassels and the leather lace running around the shoe. In particular, this loafer model is a fairly new one in the history of shoes and was certainly influenced by the penny loafer, which had its beginnings in the 1930s.
Variants
Tassel loafer made of gray nubuck leather
In gray and made of suede, these are excellent summer shoes. The color is also a relatively light gray, so you should pair the loafers with lighter trousers or shorts. And the perforation pattern loosens up the shoe even more. I can easily imagine a white or beige linen trouser looking very nice with this pair.
Unlike the vast majority of suede shoes, which are made of split suede, this pair is made of so-called nubuck leather, which has a finer nap. To make nubuck leather, the smooth-leather surface of a hide—the so-called grain side—is sanded so finely that it becomes rough like split suede, only finer. In the end, in terms of structure it will always be finer than any split suede, because it comes from the very top layer of the hide. That’s because the fineness of the nap in such a hide continuously decreases from the grain side toward the flesh side.
