The Ultimate Hush Puppies Guide: Comfort, Suede and Fit
Sixty-odd years after a dinner-table conversation about fried cornmeal, Hush Puppies are still doing the thing they were invented to do: making a leather shoe you can wear all day without thinking about it.
The brand sits in an odd spot in British footwear. Everyone's parents had a pair. Far fewer people can tell you what separates them from any other suede shoe on a shop wall, which is a shame, because the answer starts somewhere unexpected: pigskin.
Photo: Josh Sorenson / Unsplash
What makes Hush Puppies different
Wolverine spent the Second World War learning to tan pigskin for military gloves. It is an awkward hide to work with and most tanneries would not touch it. By the mid-fifties the company's engineers had cracked it, and what came out was a suede lighter and softer than anything else being cut into casual shoes.
The name arrived in 1958, from a sales manager called Jim Muir. Over dinner he asked why the fried cornmeal balls on his plate were called hush puppies, and was told farmers threw them to quiet barking dogs. Someone pointed out that sore feet were also called barking dogs. That was the pitch, and it stuck. The basset hound, officially named Jason, followed shortly after.
Pair that soft pigskin suede with a crepe sole and you have the combination the brand has sold ever since. Crepe is natural latex. It compresses underfoot and absorbs impact rather than transmitting it, which produces the slightly bouncy walk that wearers tend to describe as feeling like nothing at all. The Clarks Originals desert boot reached a similar place from a different direction at roughly the same moment in British shoemaking.
Are Hush Puppies comfortable?
Yes, though for a reason worth understanding before you buy. Most comfort footwear engineers its way there, stacking foam and moulding footbeds until the shoe does the work. Hush Puppies barely bother. The upper is soft, the sole flexes, and very little inside the shoe argues with the shape of your foot.
You notice the difference over months rather than in the shop. Foam packs down, so a cushioned trainer is at its best the day you buy it. Suede goes the other way: the upper takes the shape of your foot and keeps it, so a pair worn for a year fits better than the one still in the box. If you would rather have the support engineered in, that is a different shoe, and our piece on what podiatrists say about Skechers Arch Fit covers that side of the argument.
Both approaches work, and choosing between them comes down to whether you want the shoe holding your foot in position or simply staying out of its way.
Sizing: do they run true?
Broadly yes, so take your usual size, with two things worth knowing. Suede has more give than finished leather, so a pair that feels marginally snug across the widest part of your foot in the shop will relax within a week. Do not size up to fix that or you will have heel slip once the upper gives.
Width is the other one. Hush Puppies cut generously through the toe box compared with a slim Italian last, which explains much of their reputation among people who find smart shoes punishing. If you have historically sized up in other brands to buy width rather than length, try your true size here first.
Suede needs looking after, and a crepe sole collects grit if you let it. Our footwear care guide covers brushing and protecting nap, which takes a couple of minutes a month and makes an obvious difference to how long a pair looks good.
Hush Puppies or Clarks?
The question comes up constantly, and the two overlap more than either brand would care to admit. Both built their reputation on crepe-soled suede in the same postwar window, and both are bought largely by people who have stopped wanting to suffer for their footwear.
Where they part company is reputation. Clarks Originals spent decades being picked up by subcultures, the Wallabee in Kingston and the Bronx especially, and it prices and markets itself accordingly. Nothing similar happened to Hush Puppies, which stayed a comfort brand for people who wanted a decent-looking shoe. That is why the range runs to slippers and loafers alongside the boots.
Buy the Clarks if you want the cultural object. These are what you reach for on a wet Tuesday.
Can you still buy them, and what should you buy?
You can, and the range is deeper now than it has been in years. For autumn the suede boots do the heavy lifting: the Shaun in sand for men, the Adeline and Leonie for women. The Gianna and Maggie loafers are the everyday workhorses. The Allie and Arnold slippers cover the part of the week nobody photographs, which is most of it.
Shop Hush Puppies at TOWER
The shoe still sells on the two ideas it launched with in 1958: a hide nobody else wanted to tan, and a sole that gives. If you want to see where the other half of that postwar story went, our history of Clarks Originals picks it up from the Somerset end. The full Hush Puppies collection at TOWER is above.
