The shoes were black oxfords. They were decent shoes — not cheap, not expensive, the kind of mid-range dress shoes that a consultant buys when he needs something appropriate for client meetings. I had owned them for about two years. They had been polished once, when I bought them. Since then, they had traveled with me to dozens of hotel rooms, crossed dozens of lobby floors, and collected a fine patina of scuffs, scratches, and dull spots that I had never once noticed.
Until a client noticed.
This was after a keynote performance in Salzburg. The kind of event I do regularly — a conference, a corporate audience, magic woven into a presentation about innovation and creativity. It went well. Good reactions. Strong finish. Positive feedback at the reception afterward.
During the reception, the event organizer — a woman I will call Martina, because that is not her name — said something in passing that rearranged my thinking about professional presentation.
“You were excellent,” she said. “Truly. But — and I only mention this because I would want someone to tell me — your shoes need attention.”
She said it the way a friend says it. Privately, kindly, with the clear intention of helping. And then she added: “I always look at shoes first. It tells me how seriously someone takes the details.”
I looked down. The scuffs were obvious once I was looking for them. The toe of the left shoe had a visible scratch. The heel of the right had worn unevenly. The leather was dull everywhere. These shoes had been slowly deteriorating for months, and I had never looked at them — not once — with the kind of critical eye I applied to my effects, my script, or my timing.
Martina’s comment was one of those small moments that produces an outsized shift in perspective. She was not just talking about shoes. She was talking about a principle that applies to every detail of professional presentation: the things you neglect communicate just as loudly as the things you perfect.
The Detail Hierarchy
When I prepare for a performance, I have a hierarchy of preparation. At the top: the effects themselves. The script. The technical execution. Then: my outfit, my grooming, my presence. These are the elements I think about, plan for, rehearse.
Shoes were not on the list. They existed below the threshold of conscious consideration. I put them on, I walked to the venue, I performed, I walked back. They were functional objects, not presentation elements.
But of course they are presentation elements. Everything the audience can see is a presentation element. Fitzkee was characteristically blunt about this in Showmanship for Magicians. His grooming checklist specifically mentions spotless shoes. Not polished shoes. Spotless shoes. The standard is not “acceptable” — it is flawless.
I resisted this at first. Spotless shoes seemed like an unreasonable standard for someone who is walking through hotel corridors, crossing parking lots, standing on stages of varying cleanliness. Shoes get scuffed. That is what shoes do. Demanding spotless shoes felt like demanding that the laws of physics be suspended.
But Fitzkee is not talking about the state of your shoes during your commute. He is talking about the state of your shoes when the audience sees them. The audience does not see you walking through the parking lot. They see you on stage, under lights, presenting yourself as a professional who has prepared every detail. And the shoes they see in that moment should be spotless. What happens to the shoes between performances is irrelevant. What matters is the condition they are in when the curtain goes up.
Who Actually Looks at Shoes?
After Martina’s comment, I started paying attention. Who looks at shoes? Is she an outlier?
The answer is that a surprising number of people do. I asked colleagues in my consulting work. About a third of them said they noticed shoes. Several said they considered shoes a reliable indicator of attention to detail. One said, memorably: “You can fake a good suit. You cannot fake well-maintained shoes, because maintaining shoes requires ongoing effort.”
That observation stuck with me. A good suit can be bought. A good haircut can be gotten the day before an event. But well-maintained shoes require consistent care — the discipline of maintaining standards between moments, not just for them. That ongoing effort is what shoe condition communicates. Not wealth. Not fashion sense. Discipline.
For a performer, discipline is perhaps the single most important quality to project. The audience needs to believe that you have prepared thoroughly, that nothing has been left to chance. Scuffed shoes subtly undermine that belief — not consciously, but at the sub-perceptual level where the aggregate impression forms in the first few seconds of seeing you.
The Travel Problem
For performers who travel — and I travel constantly, both for consulting and for Vulpine Creations work — shoe maintenance presents a specific logistical challenge. You are living out of a suitcase. You are packing and unpacking in hotel rooms. You are walking through airports, train stations, conference centers. The opportunities for shoe damage are endless, and the opportunities for shoe care are limited.
Here is what I have worked out over the past year.
I travel with a small shoe care kit that lives permanently in my suitcase: a tin of black polish, a tin of neutral polish, an applicator brush, a buffing cloth, and a compact shoehorn. It weighs almost nothing and takes up the space of a paperback book.
The night before a performance — in my hotel room, as always — I spend five minutes on my shoes. Clean off dust. Apply polish. Buff. Check the heels for uneven wear. Five minutes. The same five minutes I now spend on hand care. Small rituals of professional maintenance that collectively create the impression of someone who has thought about every detail.
When luggage allows, I also carry a second pair. Walk to the venue in one pair, perform in the other. The performance shoes arrive on stage undamaged by the journey.
The Stage Perspective
Here is something many performers do not consider: depending on your staging, the audience may have a very clear view of your shoes.
If you perform on a raised stage, and the front rows are at or below stage level, those audience members are looking up at you. Their sightline includes your feet. Your shoes are not hidden below a lectern or behind a table. They are visible, sometimes prominently.
If you perform close-up, and your audience is seated while you stand, their natural resting gaze is often at mid-body level. But eyes wander. During transitions, during pauses, during moments when the attention is not locked on your hands, the audience’s gaze drifts. It drifts to your face, your posture, your clothes — and your shoes.
Dan Harlan, in his Tarbell Lesson 83 lecture, talks about checking your set from the audience’s perspective before performing. This advice applies to your personal presentation as much as it does to your stage layout. What does the audience actually see when they look at you? Not what do you see in the mirror — what do they see from their angle, at their distance, under the performance lighting?
I now make a point of checking my shoe appearance from the audience’s angle. In my hotel room, I stand in front of a full-length mirror and look down at my feet as if I were a seated audience member looking up at a standing performer. It is a slightly different angle than the top-down view I get when I look at my own feet. And it reveals things — a scuff on the toe that is invisible from above but obvious from the front, a crease in the leather that catches the light at certain angles.
The Coherence Principle
Shoes are not just about shoes. They are about coherence.
When every element of your presentation aligns — when your outfit is sharp, your grooming is impeccable, your hands are manicured, your shoes are polished, your props are clean, your staging is considered — the audience receives a unified message: this person is a professional. This person has prepared. This person cares about the experience they are creating for me.
When one element is out of alignment — when everything is polished except the shoes, or everything is considered except the hands — the audience receives a fractured message. The overall impression is still positive, probably. But there is a crack. A small inconsistency that the perceptive members of the audience will register, even if they cannot articulate what they are registering.
Fitzkee describes this in terms of unity — the connecting thread that binds an entire act together. He is talking about the content of the performance, but the principle extends to every aspect of the experience. Unity means that every element tells the same story. Your effects tell a story of skill and wonder. Your script tells a story of confidence and character. Your appearance should tell a story of preparation and professionalism. And within appearance, every element — from the top of your head to the soles of your shoes — should be consistent.
A scuffed shoe breaks that consistency. It is a small break. Most people will not notice. But some will. And even those who do not consciously notice will process the inconsistency at a sub-perceptual level, in the same way they process every other visual detail — automatically, instantly, as part of the overall impression that forms before conscious thought has time to intervene.
The Larger Pattern
Professional presentation is not about any single element. It is about the aggregate — the totality of visual signals you send to the audience before, during, and after your performance. No single element makes or breaks the impression. But every element contributes.
Your outfit, your grooming, your hands, your shoes, your props, your staging — the audience processes all of these simultaneously and holistically. They form an overall impression, and that impression is the sum of everything they observe. Neglecting any one element subtracts from the whole. Scuffed shoes do not just communicate “this person does not polish their shoes.” They dilute the professionalism that everything else is working to build.
The good news is that this is entirely within your control. Polishing shoes is not difficult or expensive. It requires only the recognition that shoes matter, and the discipline to include them in your preparation routine.
My Pre-Performance Checklist
Over the course of this series on appearance and presentation, I have been building a checklist that I now run through before every performance. It is not long. It is not complicated. But it ensures that nothing is overlooked.
Outfit: Does it match the context? Is it clean, pressed, properly fitted? Does everything coordinate? Is there one distinctive element that says “me”?
Hands: Are my nails trimmed and clean? Any hangnails or dry patches? Have I applied hand cream if needed?
Shoes: Are they polished? Any visible scuffs or damage? Are the heels even? Do they look sharp from the audience’s angle?
Hair: Is it styled and in place?
Props: Are they clean, in good condition, properly organized?
This takes less than ten minutes. It is the final step before I leave the hotel room and head to the venue. And it gives me something that no amount of technical practice can provide: the confidence that comes from knowing that every visible element of my presentation has been considered.
That confidence shows. The audience cannot see my checklist. They cannot see the shoe polish or the hand cream or the lint roller I ran over my jacket. But they can see the result — a performer who looks like he has prepared for this moment, who respects the audience enough to present himself at his best, who has not left any detail to chance.
Scuffed shoes send a message. Polished shoes send a different message. The message takes five minutes and a tin of polish to change. There is no reason not to change it. Every performance. Every time.