There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of shoe stores in New York. Unfortunately, most of them are not great. My goal with this guide to NYC’s best shoe stores is to help you find exactly what you need in the way of quality footwear—dress oxfords, tassel loafers, American-made heritage boots, whatever—at a broad range of price points, throughout New York. It’s broken into:
- The Brand Shops sell to one specific shoemaker.
- The Multi-Brand Shops offer a more comprehensive range.
- The Wildcards are essentially menswear shops, some of which only carry a single shoe brand.
But that brand and the fact that the shop carries it are notable. Here’s how the price-range dollar signs work: each $ is equivalent to about $200. So, $$=$400, $$$$=800, etc. I stopped the scale at 5, so $$$$$=$1000, but also anything over that price. And some of these stores will allow you to go plenty over.
All of the shops below are shops I’ve actually visited and felt a connection with. They sell fantastic shoes, understand how to size you properly, and would be happy to talk shoes with you for hours—theirs, of course, but also shoes in general. I’ve done precisely that at almost all of them and haven’t been forcibly removed once.
The Top 10 Boot Brand Shops:
1. Allen Edmonds:
225 Liberty Street, in Brookfield Place
551 Madison Ave, between 55th and 56th
61 W 49th St, between 5th and 6th
24 E 44th Street, between 5th & Madison
$$-$$$$
If you’ve never owned a pair of Allen Edmonds, it’s entirely possible that you don’t own any shoes at all. Based in Wisconsin since 1922, A.E. has all the dress shoe greatest-hits styles—the Strand cap-toe oxford probably being the most famous; I’ve had mine for almost a decade—at consistently reasonable-ish prices. Also notable: shell cordovan you can get for ~$800 and a line of boots highlighted by the damn handsome Higgins Mill. They’ve got both downtown and Midtown canvassed.
2. Carmina:
45 E 45th St, between Madison and Grand Central
509 Madison Ave, between 52nd & 53rd
$$-$$$$
Although the brand was launched in 1997, the family behind Carmina has been making fantastic shoes on the monumentally picturesque Spanish island of Mallorca since 1866. Despite their looks—classically handsome with little touches of distinctive European flair—and impressive quality at a great price, Carmina initially only let a trickle of their wares into the U.S. (thank you: The Armoury, featured below).
That all ended when Carmina opened a beautiful shop in October 2018, smack in the middle of the Alden/Allen Edmonds/Crockett & Jones Midtown Shoe Geek Triangle. And THEN, they opened another even larger shop just a few blocks up on Madison (ask them about the “fancy motor shelves,” you’ll see). Pretty much all of Carmina’s entire line is in one or both stores, from every kind of loafer imaginable to elegant balmoral boots to whole cuts whose comfort will make you deeply ponder why you own all those shoes made of more than one piece of leather. Best of all? Much of it is available in shell cordovan—their volume of offerings in said godly shoe leather is probably second only to Alden itself—at a price that can only be considered reasonable.
3. J.M. Weston:
600 Madison Ave, between 57th and 58th
$$$$-$$$$$
If you revere shoes, you must go to J.M. Weston. The moment you walk in, the New York total of chaos, street meat, and people who don’t even realize they’re wearing terrible shoes melts away as Bob and Tony take you through the brand’s storied history crafting astounding footwear since 1891—and repeatedly prove that they care more about shoes than most humans are capable of caring about anything.
J.M. Weston is most famous for its Mocassin 180 loafer, which is a perfectly balanced, split-toe, supreme achievement of design. It’s available in leathers ranging from the necessary black, brown, and burgundy to lizard, alligator, and more, and comes in literally every single width you could ever need. However, their most significant achievement, and one of the most unique and astonishing ready-to-wear shoes anywhere in the world, is the genuinely hand-made Hunt Derby. Originally designed to be unshakable and waterproof while duck hunting, the impenetrable Norwegian welt is a thing of distinctive beauty, and its heft will assure you that this shoe will last, essentially, forever. It’s a tank in Bugatti clothing. I beg you: see it for yourself.
4. Red Wing Heritage:
11 Pennsylvania Plaza, Suite B (right near 31st & 7th)
$-$$
Red Wing has hundreds of stores across the country, including one in Alaska…and two in Hawaii! So, of course, there must be one in New York. The old, sadly closed Tribeca store offered the entire Red Wing Heritage line—this one is more of a classic Red Wing retail operation with a healthy hybrid of actual work and heritage boots and some really fantastic How They’re Made-type displays.
5. R.M. Williams:
152 Spring St, between W. Broadway and Wooster
$$-$$$$
Chelsea boots are an incredibly versatile wardrobe staple, and heritage Aussie brand R.M. Williams may make the best version for the price of anyone out there. Their spacious, well-adorned shop—which includes a door from the very shed in which the late Reginald Murray Williams himself started making his first boots—carries a few other handsome boots and sneakers, too. But you come here for the dozens upon dozens of distinctively red-soled Craftsman Chelsea. Starting at just over $500, they’re available in leathers ranging from various colors of the calf to incredibly supple kangaroo to the exotics you’d expect from a company founded by a man who spent serious portions of his life traversing the Australian outback.
The legend of Williams himself—bushman, gold miner, author, and plenty more—is too deep and rich to recount here, but I strongly recommend reading this short but thick bio about his very long life. Once you do, I imagine you’ll see Williams’ Chelsea boots very differently—and understand why nearly every type of man in Australia, from farmers to heads of state, wears them every single day.
6. RRL:
381 W. Broadway between Spring and Broome
85 N. 3rd St, between Berry and Wythe (Brooklyn)
$$$-$$$$
While not exclusively a boot brand by any stretch (I have severe tunnel vision that leads me to see it as a shawl-collar cardigan brand), Ralph Lauren’s uptick heritage label does peddle a small handful of highly-worth shoes and boots.
7. Drake’s:
327 Canal St, between Greene and Mercer
$-$$$
Brit-brand Drake’s does its trademark relaxed elegance, as does anyone, via ties, knitwear, blazers, and more. The same could definitely be said about the Soho shop’s tightly curated footwear offerings—which often change (ahh, Paraboot, where have you gone!) but tend to include a tight range of Drake’s Italian-made desert boots (a distinct step-up in materials and construction from Clark’s classic) and deliciously comfortable moc-toe suede chukkas, plus periodic collaborations with Sebago, Yuketen, Aurora Shoe Co., and more.
8. Leffot:
10 Christopher St, between Greenwich and Gay
$$-$$$$$
When Aldens is essentially an entry-level brand, you’re in a different kind of shoe store. Over the years, stupendously knowledgeable owner Steven Taffel has curated and re-curated and re-re-curated an airtight lineup of what could indeed be said to be (I’m saying it!) the perfect spectrum of options from some of the finest and most distinctive shoemakers in operation today.
At the moment, that means a core makers lineup—Cheaney, Corthay, Edward Green, Gaziano & Girling, Hiro Yanagamachi, Norman Vilalta, Rancourt, and more—reflecting every potential need from casual affordable chukkas to impossibly beautiful (and slightly pricier). On top of that, Leffot’s constantly refreshed pre-owned program is absolutely worth a look (at least once weekly, honestly). Taffel only buys the best-condition used shoes from customers—no sit-and-hope commission structure here: if he likes your shoes, he’ll pay you on the spot—and sells them at prices far more fair than what you’ll tend to see from eBay and others re-sellers.
9. Nepenthes:
307 W 38th St, between 8th and 9th Ave
$-$$$
Nobly keeping the ever-changing Garment District full of garments in its little way, Nepenthes is owned by Japanese workwear dons Engineered Garments, whose stamp you’ll see on a lot of Nepenthes’ shoes’ footbeds—especially their endless collaborations with Tricker’s. The British maker consistently pulls off the rare trick of melding timeless style with some of the more bomb-proof shoes you’ll ever wear.
Nepenthes pushes the style portion of that special sauce to more aggressive, often street-in places than Tricker’s would themselves while always keeping things within the proper bounds. Not necessarily entirely as reserved are collaborations with brands like Timberland and Dr. Marten’s. And unsurprisingly, they’ve also got a tight selection of Whites, Paraboot, EasyMoc, Sebago, and Alden because this is a critical shoe store that sells essential shoes, damnit.
10. Hatchet Outdoor Supply Co.:
77 Atlantic St, between Hicks and Henry (Brooklyn)
$$-$$$
The name is no lie: this specialty shop at the end of the Atlantic/the earth will absolutely supply you with hatchets. Nice ones, too! An excellent portion of their footwear is similarly outdoors-technical, but they also stock a nicely robust line of Red Wings, some stray Paraboots and Hender Schemes, and some boundary-pushing Dr. Martens.
Read also: The Perfect Choice: How Clients and Businesses Select Each Other.
