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"Lace-up shoes worn without laces, like underwear-revealing droopy drawers, is an example of correctional chic. Shoelaces, like belts, are confiscated from some of the more dangerous prisoners at penal institutions so as to deter strangling of themselves or others. The lack of laces thus came to signify a \"Don't tread on me\" posture. Run-DMC spread that fashion worldwide via \"My Adidas\" with no shoe string in 'em. Years passed. Converse and other sneaker manufacturers began making shoes with nonfunctional eyelets and invisible elastic closures. Eventually the laceless look passed over into the dress-shoe world; now we have the Enron-DMC look\u2014wingtip brogues with no strings attached but sporting the usual eyelets or grommets. Remarkably, this look actually predates hip-hop lacelessness, dating from a design by Nikolaus Tuczek. Tuczek has been called the Leonardo da Vinci of shoemaking. His firm ruled London's cobbler scene from 1853 until 1968 (when it was taken over by John Lobb). Along the way he modernized many styles, including a gusseted slipper with a brogued wingtip vamp. Perhaps the most remarkable Tuczek shoes were his side-gusseted full brogues with false laces. As our reader points out, the accents on brogues are nonfunctional, but they weren't always; they were made to drain the shoes of bog-trotting rustics. As for corporate wear, however, do you want to look like the CEO took away your laces so you wouldn't hang yourself?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/laceless-dress-shoes-wingtips>