Straight Bar Lacing

Q: “I was on the subway this morning and saw this well-dressed guy with his shoes laced up a bit differently. The laces didn’t cross each other and it looked much cleaner. Do you know what I’m talking about? How I can tie my shoe like that?” – Joseph E.

A: That dapper gent was most likely tying his shoe using the Straight Bar Lacing method. The neater appearance is derived from the ingenious method of looping only one side of your shoe lace through the shoe eyelets, which eliminates the clutter of the traditional “crossing” method. You can see that traditional crossed laces (pictured on the left below) lack the visual sleekness of the Straight Bar lace (pictured on right below). So while many of you might be more familiar with former, we’re here to teach you the latter. And the best part? The Straight Bar lace is so easy and effective, you’ll be upping your style game in less than 5 minutes flat.

The Straight Bar Lacing Method: Here’s a 3-step visual diagram that explains (far better than words) the straight bar lacing technique. So grab your shoes and follow along:

Illustration by Ian Fieggen

A tip to remember is that the yellow lace pictured in step 2 and 3 above needs to start off at approximately double the length of the blue lace. The reason is that the yellow lace is the side that’s being looped through all the shoe eyelets, so you’ll need a bit more slack to make sure both sides of the lace end up even. We know that once you see how much better your shoes look using the Straight Bar Lacing method, you won’t go back to the ol’ criss-cross!

We hope you learned something new today!

If you have any specific questions or comments about this topic or any others, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email at concierge@blacklapel.com!