Harry Styles walked eight miles in loafers. Is he ruining his toes? There’s just one technique to discover out | Males’s footwear

Last month, simply earlier than his 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden, Harry Styles was noticed strolling the streets of New York. According to the paparazzi who trailed him all through his journey, he walked eight miles – all the way in which from Brooklyn into Manhattan – in loafers.

If, like me, you personal a pair of loafers, your first thought might be: that doesn’t sound like a good suggestion. On Instagram, Grazia referred to as Styles’ footwear “maybe the least smart footwear for such an enterprise”.

You may think that single outing would have taught Styles a lesson, however he was photographed a number of days later in the identical pair of loafers, which all of the proof suggests are darkish brown, pre-distressed Prada “Shuffle” footwear that value £910. At that worth I wouldn’t even put on them exterior – they appear smooth and flimsy, like a cross between a moccasin and a ballet slipper.

However, following Styles’ instance, I’m abruptly decided to get extra mileage out of my very own, underused slip-ons. I imply to put on them day by day, all day, for every week – and to stroll at the least eight miles in them, if not in someday, then at the least cumulatively.

But first I’ve a query: might it’s dangerous for my toes? What are the precise dangers of such an enterprise?

“A idler by development has a smaller quantity within the forefoot than a shoe that has a considerable fastening,” says Dr Helen Branthwaite, chief medical advisor on the Royal College of Podiatry. In different phrases, a slip-on shoe is slim on the entrance as a result of, with out laces or straps, it’s the one means it could actually maintain on to your foot. “This could trigger some compression to the toes if the form and quantity of the entrance of the shoe shouldn’t be the identical because the wearer’s foot.”

I ship a hyperlink to a Styles/idler pap shot to Christophe Champs, an orthotics specialist and the founding father of the Podo clinic in London. “The predominant downside I see in that image is a summer time look,” he says. “Summer is the worst season for us.” Pounding arduous metropolis pavements in insubstantial footwear with no heel contour or arch assist – slippers, loafers, flip-flops – may cause actual issues. During this previous scorching summer time, Champs says his clinic noticed a fivefold improve in sufferers presenting with plantar fasciitis – a painful irritation of the tissue connecting your heel to your toes.

For a few years the style planet has remarked upon a gradual decline within the variety of trainers showing at runway reveals, and the corresponding development for loafers. “The youthful buyer is asking for types that have been significantly scorching within the Seventies,” shoemaker Tim Little, proprietor of footwear model Grenson, advised Esquire in January. “Thin, slim-soled, typically tasselled, and, above all straightforward on the toes.” GQ additionally not too long ago declared that loafers have been the “most crucial shoes of 2026”.

It’s raining the primary time I determine to put on my loafers all day, and I’m fairly footsore by suppertime, having lined not more than three miles. Along the way in which I’ve skilled each toe compression and heel slippage. But the footwear additionally harm as a result of I’ve by no means worn them lengthy sufficient to interrupt them in correctly, though I purchased them years in the past. Mine are sturdy, thick-soled penny loafers, fairly in contrast to Styles’ pair.

Styles’ footwear, I’ve come to know, are a modern slip-on subset typically generally known as a “scrunch idler”. They’re so fully with out construction that they appear as in the event that they’ve been run over by a steamroller. Perversely, Styles’ loafers have laces.

But, in response to Champs, there’s a greater and extra widespread downside than strolling eight miles in scrunch loafers: the widespread behavior of sporting trainers on one’s every day commute. He says the soles of most inexpensive fashionable trainers are too excessive, too mild and too cushioned to supply correct assist. “You take a look at individuals from behind and it’s painful,” he says. “They’re on massive fats sponges. So at the least Harry doesn’t have this.”

His compromise suggestion for males’s walk-to-work footwear is a well-made gown shoe. “It’s time now to carry sufferers again into gown footwear,” he says. “But when my sufferers see my footwear they inform me, ‘Christophe, that for me is wedding ceremony and funeral.’” When he holds up his shoe to the Zoom digicam for me, I’m shocked to see they’re not in contrast to my loafers, albeit with a pair of his personal orthotic inserts tucked inside (Champs obtained into the orthotics recreation due to foot accidents he suffered as an athlete).

On my second day in loafers, I handle 5 miles in complete, however by the night I can really feel my crowded fourth toes starting to climb up over their bigger neighbours. I’m starting to see the enchantment of Styles’ £910 slippers – at the least your foot isn’t boxed in all day. And whereas it will in all probability be clever to alert followers to the risks of emulating his alternative of long-distance travelling shoe, it doesn’t imply it’s essentially an issue for Styles himself.

“If Harry Styles is snug in loafers, and he can dance and stroll in them, then he will need to have a robust foot, with a complementary form to the shoe in query,” says Branthwaite, declaring that Styles is a educated performer. “If another person needs to stroll eight miles in his footwear, then they might additionally have to do the identical coaching and apply.”

In Champs’ opinion, Styles’ footwear, whereas wholly inappropriate for an eight-mile hike, is not at all the worst possibility. “Those footwear will not be so dangerous for a brief stroll,” he says. “It’s really extra harmful to put on first rate footwear which are out of form as a result of they’ve been used for too lengthy. Shoes want three issues: to be current, first rate and laced up.”

That’s sufficient recommendation to steer me to surrender my idler marathon midway by way of day three, and lengthy earlier than I’ve walked eight miles in them. Then once more, all the opposite footwear in my cabinet, it’s doable they’re nonetheless my finest wager.

Later I used to be made conscious of much more current paparazzi pictures that confirmed Styles sporting flat-soled mild blue trainers. Maybe he’s realized his lesson in spite of everything.