Some footwear are meant for both male and female while other are basically unisex. Most basic features of them are enumerated as follows:-
Men dress shoes usually consist of a pair of heel or sole and leather top. The soles are mostly made from leather or rubber materials. Since the sole is that part that touch the ground and on which the footwear will have to be walked on, the leather and rubber will be of hard materials. The inside part of the sole is made to aid comfort and must be durable enough while the outside is padded to make it have a firm grip on the floor. Those with standard heel will make the rear of the footwear very high.
The top are made of cloth and leather. From the toe up to the counter, we have one form of decoration or the other. The counter is the back of the footwear and is usually reinforced to hold the foot very well. The top line is the inner fabrics and the holes are made on it to make it possible to do lacing. The vamp is also called the strip and runs from the middle of the arch up to the toe’s top. The toecap is the front part and is reinforced to resist damage and abrasion
Dress shoes can be categorized based on their trends and style. There are boots, loafers and oxford.
Boots: this style typically extends up to the ankle of the leg and can even go up above it. They are most times elastic and will have zippers.
The loafers: These trends of footwear are not made to have laces. They can be easily worn and come with many different styles (e.g. monk straps, etc).
Oxfords: This style unarguably is the usual traditional type of footwear which are made with leather and designed with one form of lace or the other. Oxford brands also come from different colors starting from brown, black up to unusual colors of yellow, pink and red wine.
We can equally categorize shoes based on the style of the toes. We have cap toe, plain toe, apron, and bicycle type. Cap toe styles have leather coverings in the front to act as additional form of reinforcement. Plain toes do not have any covering in the front and the apron styles have two different types of materials in the front while the bicycle types are like the apron toe styles without the front.