In the past year I went to the Netherlands and I noticed in business casual offices many leather dressy shoes were at least as long as American cowboy boots but had a square toe. Like 1 1/2 - 2" beyond the toe space inside. Some designs made me think of fairy boots in children’s books except the toes didn’t curl up.
Is this a European style thing?
Is this a Dutch traditional thing?
Does this go back to some function like cowboy boots being easy to slide into stirrups?
I think it is just a fashion thing, as far as I can tell their modern variations on winklepickers, that have been fashionable with various UK youth cultures on-and-off for over fifty years.
I’ve seen the same style worn by many US men of a certain GQ-wannabe bent. (GQ as in Gentlemen’s Quarterly). And this has been true for a few years now.
I think you may have missed the point (no pun intended!). It’s not that Europeans like to wear overly long shoes; it’s that we absolutely hate to walk with our toes squeezed together. (I know this is true of me). For some stupid reason, fashion dictates that shoes should be at least somewhat pointed towards the center line; I guess this had some reason hundreds of years ago, for riding purposes or whatnot. Anyway, the only way to get rid of the unbearable pain of the shoe pressing against your big- and pinky toes is to get shoes the size of a small kayak (unless you opt to buy handmade shoes, which will cost you a fortune!)
French here, and moderately to very long pointy toe ends have definitely become a common aspect of male fashion here over the past… I dunno, 5 ? 10 years ? I think it looks ridiculous myself, but then again non-ridiculous fashion isn’t
It’s a fairly recent development (older men’s shoes have/had rounded or square tips), so no fancy age-old origin.
I don’t think OP is talking about winklepickers or corner-kickers, I think he just means an elongated toe box, like these. It’s actually an Italian thing, but a lot of Europeans take their style lead from Italy.
In my office, we have a very international group. We also work with a number of European offices, and it’s a running joke that all the European men wear pointy shoes and tight pink pants. All in friendly teasing, but the European guys only deny the pink pants.
That is to say, it appears to be fashionable in Europe, has been for a while, and personally I think they look like clown shoes.
I think this is the answer for what I saw. The individuals that wore then definitely had some GQ tendencies and were type-A personalities in customer-facing jobs. And French dress shoes would be even more GQ.
The pointy shoes are a thing among Quebec males as well. I first noticed it during business trips about 8 to 10 years ago. I have seen it among both Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers, so it’s not necessary a French thing. Mercifully, it hasn’t appeared to have taken here in Ontario.