As a rule of thumb, sneakers with suits are a terrible idea. Unless maybe you’re Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire media mogul who — seemingly chasing Elizabeth Taylor’s lifetime tally of eight marriages — married his fifth wife on Saturday in a ceremony at his Tuscan vineyard in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Mr. Murdoch’s new bride, Elena Zhukova, 67, is a retired molecular biologist who was previously married to Alexander Zhukov, the Russian billionaire energy investor. She was dressed for the occasion in an ankle-length off-white cocktail dress with a square portrait neck and matching pumps.
Age-appropriate (whatever that means), class-appropriate and length appropriate for a daytime wedding, Ms. Zhukova’s outfit was understated and conventional. Mr Murdoch’s CEO case was also uncontroversial.
However, it was his shoe selection that raised eyebrows in certain corners of the internet, where critics predictably fussed over the fact that the required footwear for a formal suit is a hard-soled leather shoe. Not only does an Oxford or even a Derby “complete” a formal look, it is a coded social meaning “of politeness and good manners,” as Jim Moore, the creative director of GQ, once noted in the context of sneaker shoes. worn by several politicians during a meeting with President Biden in the Oval Office.
How we dress is always some kind of compromise. Even if you’re a star on the Met Gala red carpet, where extreme attacks are routine, mobility is routinely sacrificed to optics: female celebrities are occasionally hobbled, corseted and, in cases like that of the South African singer Tyla, almost all immobilized. (Her gala dress was so tight at the hem that she had to be lifted up the museum stairs by so-called bustle butlers.)
Men rarely have to endure the kind of discomfort in clothing that women have historically had to endure. Still, Mr Murdoch’s decision to wear sneakers – although unconfirmed, the shoes appear to be Hokas, not far from the sustainably designed ‘Transports’ model that Mr Biden wore during a visit to the US-Mexico border – perhaps was a ‘don’t worry’ game from a master of the universe.
“Sure, it might raise eyebrows in some conservative circles, and personally I think sneakers with suits are disgusting,” said Eugene Rabkin, editor of StyleZeitgeist magazine. “But casualization has penetrated so far in the chain of formality that it would almost be punk for him to wear leather shoes.”
Or else it might as well have been a nod to the demands of age and terrain. “He was dressed in all business suits with a pocket square and tie, so there was nothing halfway there,” says Nick Sullivan, Esquire’s creative director. Most likely, he added, the addition of sneakers for a lawn wedding was just common sense.
