The battle of the billionaire shoes

In July it will be exactly 20 years since I saw my first pair of Loro Piana Open Walk shoes. It was at a regatta near Moscow on 1 July 2006, on the feet of a man dressed entirely in varying shades of sand, a palette that spoke eloquently of Loro Piana’s extravagant understatement. The shoes looked like laceless desert boots. I thought I was observing just another oligarch; only later did I realise I had seen an early adopter of a shoe that would tip the world’s taste towards what we now call “quiet luxury”.

Today, the shoe is so famous it hardly needs description: a white rubber sole, a suede upper, held on the foot by elastic concealed beneath the tongue. You will see Open Walks (from £890) on the feet of David Beckham and Ryan Reynolds. Meanwhile, the Summer Walk, a lower-profile loafer version (from £890), is the billionaire’s island-hopping shoe of choice: see Jeff Bezos in Ibiza and Succession’s Kendall Roy. It has also inspired shoe brands big and small to make versions of their own.

“I was walking down [Milan’s] Via Montenapoleone the other day,” observes Luisa Loro Piana, her voice carrying the wry, knowing amusement of someone who helped engineer a sartorial revolution, “and all I could see were white soles. All of them. Everywhere.” She pauses with evident satisfaction. “And I thought: ‘We did that.’”

He took months and months to find the right white for the soles

Indeed they did; “they” being Luisa and her late husband Sergio Loro Piana who, with his brother Pier Luigi, developed an apparel business that was acquired in 2013 by LVMH. Sergio was a true aesthete. He did not see himself as a designer; instead, he spoke of providing his customers with solutions to problems they did not yet know they had. The Open Walk was a solution to a high‑class problem. Sergio wanted a shoe that would not mark the deck of his boat and, believing that traditional boat shoes were cumbersome and ugly, set out to make his own. “We worked for two years on the design. He took months and months to find the right white for the soles,” recalls Luisa.

Loro Piana Open Walk boots, from £890

Finally, the ultra‑high‑net‑worth boat shoe was ready for launch… and promptly sank. “Retailers said, ‘Nobody wants them,’” Luisa continues. Sergio began giving pairs away to friends to try. “He lost money but was unmoved. He was always saying, ‘If it’s good for me, it’s good for them.’” To demonstrate their versatility he started wearing them with suits.

Loro Piana no longer needs to persuade customers they can wear them to a board meeting: the billionaire bootee is now baked into the 0.01 per cent’s wardrobe. Nevertheless, there remains a mystique about it. As a shoemaking friend recently remarked to me, there had been plenty of elastic‑fastened shoes and plenty of white‑soled deck shoes before. What Sergio Loro Piana did was refine them, elevate them and – of course – make them reassuringly expensive.

But now there is another way in which the rich can recognise one another. Zegna’s Triple Stitch – a sneaker with dress-shoe aspirations (from £780) – has already gained a strong foothold among a notably elite clientele including Hugh Jackman, Javier Bardem and Nicolas Cage since its 2019 design. It is popular in the C suite, where it is prized for its comfort and understatement. Jean‑Frédéric Dufour, CEO of Rolex, wears the Triple Stitch with a suit; Tim Cook of Apple has been photographed in a pair; and CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-creator of Billions, wears them too. Then there are the football managers and pundits, too numerous to count. 

As the name suggests, Zegna’s invention rests on three cruciform “stitches” of elastic where one would usually expect laces. Much as “x” marks the spot on a pirate’s map, three crosses on a man’s instep seem to indicate a certain degree of financial and professional success. New variants continue to appear, including the Secondskin version in ultra‑fine leather (from £1,310), produced in very limited quantities, as well as the Monte iteration (from £1,220) which is mounted on an all-terrain Vibram sole, and a version in cashmere (£1,315).

Zegna Triple Stitch shoes, from £780

The Triple Stitch has certainly been a business boon for group executive chairman/CEO Gildo Zegna: “We have to limit sales because demand is so high… we don’t have enough production at our factory, so we are building a new one in Parma,” he told me. Reports suggest Loro Piana has also limited distribution: the Open Walk is difficult to track down on its website and even harder to locate in stores. “When it comes to luxury, scarcity is king,” says analyst Simeon Siegel, senior managing director at Guggenheim Partners. “To certain buyers, the status a product conveys can matter more than its actual design.”

How valuable is this category of smart-
casual shoes? “​Be it a Birkin, Air Force 1, Submariner or ABC pant, it is a powerful thing when customers identify specific products by name. When done right, these products can drive meaningful lifts to brand image as well as to revenues,” says Siegel.

The Triple Stitch is, at heart, a simple idea executed with particular attention to comfort and detail. If it proves as lasting as the Open Walk, it will provide further evidence that the most enduring designs are those that solve practical problems through elegant means.