If you want to know if a fellow is well-dressed, goes the old adage, look down. Since the reign of Beau Brummell, who ostensibly had his boots polished with champagne, rumors about secret formulas ...

I stumbled across Lincoln a few years ago at a shine stand in Denver, when I asked the proprietor about the unfamiliar polish in the arresting yellow-and-blue tin that he was applying to my oxfords.

A friend once told me about his father, whose workaday job involved a numbing commute and thankless trips up and down the East Coast. The only thing that brought Tom Kingsley Jr. any solace was having ...