After a year spent building its credibility as one of the coolest menโs shoe brands in Australia, Etymology has decided to unveil a brand new lookbook just in time for summer โ complete with numerous elegant slip-on footwear silhouettes Iโd 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 menโs shoe styles (both new and essential) in and around Sydneyโs CBD.
Entitled Social Structures, Etymologyโs sophomore campaign is described by the brand itself as a โphotographic studyโฆ of a modern city through the footwear of its inhabitants.โ
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Thatโs an organising principle weโve seen cult-status menswear brands embrace before; and while the omission of characters like the โHypebeastโ or โRun Club Obsessiveโ feels conspicuous, weโre willing to chalk that up to artistic licence.
As Gabriel Abi-Saab, Creative Director of Etymology, himself says: the intent was to champion โan eclectic cast of characters that embody our considered approach to design.โ (Evidently, all of whom have a penchant for tailored clothing by REMY.)
Even if youโre not a โFuturistโ, โCritic,โ or โCurator,โ the brandโs focus this go around on earthen shades of brown (โan important colour of everyday life,โ says Abi-Saab) lends many of the styles on display a certain modality โ more than enough for men to dress the part theyโd like to play.
Etymologyโs โUtzonโ captoe oxford makes a reoccurring appearance, as does its โItoโ 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 โneither basic nor primaryโ brown.
On the pennies front, the brandโs signature โItoโ loafer is reimagined in both brown calfskin leather and tobacco-colour suede; whereas the โYasiinโ is now available in brown suede โ 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.
