Black & Tan

 Steven Taffel knows a thing or two about good looking shoes. He's the owner of New York shoe shop Leffot which, for the uninitiated, stocks the kind of beautiful benchmade shoes that make it seem perfectly sensible to drop a good portion of your rent money on footwear. So when he told us about his latest discovery, we were happy to hear that it was essentially free—swapping out your black shoes' laces for brown. "It's a great way of taking a classic shoe and updating it in a subtle, sartorial way," says Taffel, who's since added the personal touch to a few of his own shoes. "It has a powerful effect, like changing the buttons on your blazer."

"In my experience, finding interesting laces is difficult in the US, but Ian's Shoelace Site has a good variety at great prices."