I have had a pretty hard time shopping for dress shoes.  At 25, I have probably owned somewhere between 5 and 10 pairs of dress shoes, and they have all been last minute Payless or Ross trips for the cheapest passable shoe to get me into whatever event/club requires them.  Then one night I borrowed a pair of fairly expensive shoes from a friend for the night and man did I feel like a caveman who discovered fire.  Next I get invited to a wedding in Las Vegas.  So I decided it was high time to find me a decent pair of dress shoes.

I have learned a few things in my search.

1)Crappy shoes are ugly and yes people do notice, and yes you should care that is why you are wearing dress shoes dummy.

2)Good quality lifetime dress shoes are freaking expensive ($350+)

3)There are a lot of ugly freaking dress shoes out there.  Save them for your grandpa people.

4)Ankle high dress boots make you look sophisticated and worldly, regular dress shoes make you look like you're golfing with my dad. (Then again I might just have a preference, I wear high top converse and work boots usually)

These shoes:
Pros:
  They look awesome!  They are definitely slimmer fitting, so if you have wide feet, you might want to figure out your shoe width first.  They have a slim pointy (not too pointy) feel and look to them.  I am 6'1" and about 185 lbs. and these looked great with some slim fitted pants.  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0087C9018/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00  I ended up wearing them with nicer slacks for the wedding, but man I wished those slacks fit like those Alpha Dockers, It would have looked way better.

Cons:
  Questionable quality.  While having very little comparisons to decide dress shoe quality, I do actually wear decent boots for work and leisure and have for years, so I have an idea of how good quality leather is versus bad.  These feel...meh...they definitely do not scream quality or longevity.  But straddling that fine line between quality and looks is really hard with shoes I'm finding.
  I am actually returning this pair after one night of use because one of the upper lace hooks popped out in that one night.  Thats a pretty bad sign, but I will give another pair a try because they look so awesome.

Notes...can be pro or con.

Instead of port holes for the ankle length of the laces, there are hooks as can clearly be seen.  For me, this was a selling point because hooks are SOOOOOOO much easier to take off after a night of drinking than port holes all the way up.  The downside of course is they are slightly harder to lace up, and the hooks are not as strong as holes apparently.(Read con)

These squeek out of the box.  Whatever, they are new shiny leather boots, plenty of reviews gave decent advise on conditioning them to get rid of that.

Plasticky look.  At first I was kind of disappointed in how plasticky they look.  That can be pretty tacky to some peoples eyes.  Its really the shine that does that.  But after wearing them for a bit, and seeing the crazy shiny shoes at the wedding I took these too, I ended up liking how they looked a lot.

I guess decent dress shoe=leather sole=no tread?  I nearly slipped and fell on my ass on carpet the first 20 minutes of wearing these.  There are remedies for this (sandpaper? Yeesh) but after a little walking on concrete they got scuffed enough to not fear for my life.  Apparently shoe scientists haven't discovered a way to etch a little tread into a nice leather sole.

So in conclusion.  I was really torn in whether to return these for a refund knowing the quality is questionable and the second pair may very well pop a hook just as well, or to get a new pair.  I chose to try a second pair.  They do look awesome, I need some good dress shoes, and I'm not paying 350+ for shoes unless I find the perfect style and quality I'm searching for.

If anyone reads this and knows of a pair with a similar look but of way better quality or even god forbid a lifetime guarantee of some sort PLEASE respond with a link.  1000 Mile Wolverines don't really look very dressy in the pictures I saw, feel free to tell me if you disagree.