Boat Shoe: It Feels Like Everyone Is Wearing This Dad Wardrobe Staple for Fall

Every fall, like clockwork, there emerges a new It shoe—and it just may be the boat shoe’s time.

For the last couple of years the It shoe has probably been some variation on the Adidas Samba (when will everyone get tired of that sneaker? Probably never, let’s be honest). But there have been some other significant contenders more recently. The Clarks Originals Wallabees. The eternal loafer. The classic Y2K Ugg boot.

And now, we have a new aspirant in town: the boat shoe, which I wasn’t able to escape this weekend on the leaf-strewn streets of London.

While you might associate boat shoes with dads and camp counselors in beige shorts, or else mega-wealthy yachty types at Wimbledon, don’t be fooled. This isn’t that sort of boat shoe.

The one I kept clocking around town was more often than not a blockier kind worn by Gen Z—the unisex sort you can get from Kickers or Timberland—and nobody, absolutely nobody, was wearing them without socks or with a too-tight cropped pant like they do in Nantucket.

Consider them the style Pokémon evolution of the Clarks Wallabee, only even more dad-like. And they’re just as often—if not more so—worn by the girls as they are the guys.