How To: Style Your Laces!
January 06, 2025
Today's post is all about styling your lace up shoes for the Spring and Summer time, which some people may find bizarre but trust us they do look amazing once you've finished and it's a really fun and creative thing to do which is always a bonus.
What is Creative Lacing?
Lace styling can be achieved to create different looks by using coloured ribbon or laces of your choice and there are both some easy styles and also some intricate ones that you can try.
The shoes I've used for this are the Meru womens canvas shoes by Red Fish as I found them to work better with the laces I had chosen to use, especially as the laces have polka dots printed all over them which I love. You can also get canvas shoes for men, women and kids in different prints, styles and colours. So there really is no limit when it comes to who can give this a try.
You will need:
- Your choice of lace up shoes (canvas, trainers etc.)
- A variety of different coloured laces and ribbon of your choice
- Scissors (to cut the lace to the correct size)
- Instructions for you to follow / examples
Once you have all you need it's time to pick some of your favourite styles and which laces you like the most & then you can finally begin to lace up your shoes. Now I know that some of the styles look a little complex, but you will soon get the hang of it I'm sure.
The lace styles we tried:
Military– this is the inside/out version of bow tie lacing, where the ends of the laces are tucked into the shoe for a neater look. With the crossovers on the inside, but with the laces running parallel through the eyelets you get more flex with your shoes. This is a popular technique used on military and army boots.
Paralela or straight bar lacing is where there are no crossovers which gives you a neat lace look as well as relieving pressure on the ridge of the foot. Be sure to only use this technique on shoes with an even number of eyelets though or it won’t work as well.
Cruzada is where the laces cross over in a classic way, this style is perfect for begininners. Why not mix things up and use two different coloured laces or patterned ribbon. This is the perfect style for being creative and showcasing the different colours and textured laces and ribbons.
My personal favourite of all the styles that I recreated had to be the 'military'. I found it quite challenging to do but the shoes now look great and I'm really pleased with them and how they turned out.
The best part about this is that you can swap and change your laces to match your outfits or even the changing of seasons, so you can get as imaginative as you like with this. These canvas shoes would go perfectly with either a casual day to day look for example; jeans or they would even look lovely with a pretty spring/summer dress.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and I also hope that it has given you some inspiration and also the knowledge of what 'lace styling' actually means and how to do it for yourself.
Have fun!
Check out the shoezone blog for more style tips and footwear suggestions for every occasion.