After a year spent building its credibility as one of the coolest men’s shoe brands in Australia, Etymology has decided to unveil a brand new lookbook just in time for summer — complete with numerous elegant slip-on footwear silhouettes I’d wager most of our readers will enjoy wearing well into 2025.
Inspired by the realist portraiture of European photographers such as August Sander, the Etymology team has snapped a range of its men’s shoe styles (both new and essential) in and around Sydney’s CBD.
Entitled Social Structures, Etymology’s sophomore campaign is described by the brand itself as a “photographic study… of a modern city through the footwear of its inhabitants.”
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That’s an organising principle we’ve seen cult-status menswear brands embrace before; and while the omission of characters like the ‘Hypebeast’ or ‘Run Club Obsessive’ feels conspicuous, we’re willing to chalk that up to artistic licence.
As Gabriel Abi-Saab, Creative Director of Etymology, himself says: the intent was to champion “an eclectic cast of characters that embody our considered approach to design.” (Evidently, all of whom have a penchant for tailored clothing by REMY.)
Even if you’re not a ‘Futurist’, ‘Critic,’ or ‘Curator,’ the brand’s focus this go around on earthen shades of brown (“an important colour of everyday life,” says Abi-Saab) lends many of the styles on display a certain modality — more than enough for men to dress the part they’d like to play.
Etymology’s ‘Utzon’ captoe oxford makes a reoccurring appearance, as does its ‘Ito’ penny loafer in black calf leather. Notably, both are twinned with the black tie and black tie-adjacent looks in the campaign.
There are, however, a handful of important new additions to the core Etymology range. As previously mentioned, all of these (i.e. two styles of a penny loafer and a tassel) are in different shades of “neither basic nor primary” brown.
On the pennies front, the brand’s signature ‘Ito’ loafer is reimagined in both brown calfskin leather and tobacco-colour suede; whereas the ‘Yasiin’ is now available in brown suede — a staple footwear combo among sartorial dressers.
All three styles carry a flat price-tag of $495, and are made in the Spanish town of Almansa with a Goodyear welt and natural cork midsole. You can learn more about the process through which Etymology manufactures its footwear here.
