Sports · November 2026 · 4 min read
Running in Oxfords
At the New York City Marathon on Sunday, Santoni sent three runners into the race in suits, ties and its new lightweight Oxfords
Perhaps the most memorable runners at a marathon are not always the fastest. Every year, among the thousands of people in technical shirts and carbon-plated shoes, there are a few who make you look twice. A superhero costume, a bride in a veil, a man carrying a fridge. At the New York City Marathon last Sunday, three runners stood out for a very different reason. They wore suits. And ties. And on their feet, instead of running shoes, black leather Oxfords.
Behind the idea was the Italian shoemaker Santoni, which used the marathon weekend to present a new shoe in the most literal way possible. The model is called Easy Run, and on paper it looks like a classic Oxford lace-up in black leather. Underneath, it is something else. According to Santoni, the shoe weighs 295 grams, roughly what a regular running shoe weighs. It has an invisible elastic system in the upper, a perforated nappa leather lining, a memory foam insole and the bright orange rubber sole that has become a signature of the brand's Easy line. It is the lightest model in that family so far.
It is a shoe that looks like a board meeting and feels like a Sunday.
Of course, this was a brand campaign, and nobody is seriously suggesting that you should run your next 42 kilometres in leather lace-ups. But as an image, it works remarkably well. Running in a suit is absurd, and that is exactly why it sticks. It turns a product promise, comfort that does not look like comfort, into something you can understand in a single photo. Around the race, Santoni continued the idea. A flashmob of dancers in full tailoring, all wearing the same shoes, moved through Central Park, Times Square and along Madison Avenue, and the brand ran a pop-up in the Meatpacking District on the Friday and Saturday of marathon weekend.
From the Marche to Madison Avenue
To understand why this campaign is interesting, it helps to know where Santoni comes from. The company was founded in 1975 in Corridonia, in Italy's Marche region, an area with a long tradition of shoemaking. For decades, Santoni has been known for handmade men's shoes and for a technique called Velatura, in which leather is coloured by hand in thin layers until it gets its depth. Its New York flagship is on Madison Avenue. In other words, this is not a sneaker brand trying to look elegant. It is a classic shoemaker trying to make elegance move.
And that reflects a much bigger shift. For years, the dress shoe has been under pressure. Offices became more relaxed, sneakers moved into boardrooms and onto red carpets, and many men simply stopped wearing anything that pinched. Brands like Santoni have answered this not by giving up the Oxford, but by rebuilding it from the inside. The outside stays formal, the inside borrows everything it can from sports footwear. It is a shoe that looks like a board meeting and feels like a Sunday.
It also helps that the New York City Marathon is not just any race. It runs through all five boroughs, from Staten Island across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and finally into Central Park in Manhattan. Along the way, the streets are lined with spectators who cheer for strangers as if they were family. A race like that is made for moments people remember, and for images that travel far beyond the finish line. Three men in suits are exactly that kind of image.
Whether three runners in suits actually finished the race comfortably is something only they can say. But the point of the stunt was never the finishing time. It was the question it leaves behind. Why should elegance always come with a little bit of pain? Why should you have to choose between looking put together and feeling good?
Maybe that is the real story of this marathon weekend. Not that someone ran in Oxfords, but that a classic shoemaker is willing to make fun of its own category to move it forward. In New York, of all places, a city that walks more than almost any other, that feels like the right place to do it.