I cannot quite tell from the portrait of a reclining Mr. Soames, but he would seem the type of gentleman to prefer spats. Today we see them in Broadway productions and retro shows ("steppin' out with my baby..."), but there was a time when they were quite fashionable.

The predecessor to spats was cloth shoe covers with a leather sole that were popular in England in the 1600s. The French removed the sole and incorporated the footwear into military attire. The design was actually longer, with the spatterdash (or gaiter, as they were also called) reaching nearly to the knee. The style moved across Europe, and by the 19th century they had been pared down to the shorter ankle length that is familiar today, fastened with a buckle underneath the sole. Near the end of the century, spats were a prized accessory worn by men and women alike. In winter, they would be made out of heavy boxcloth; in summertime, linen was the fabric of choice. As the fashion sense of the day became keener, the louder colors and shocking patterns of spats were simplified. High fashion dictated that the best-dressed person wore spats only in grey, white or tan.

And they are still being made for those adventurous types: white spats, a waistcoat, and a trim pocket square. And here too.

And the irrepressible John Derbyshire has been urging a spats revival now for over a year:

One additional sad thing about the death of Bob Hope was that he was the last person of any importance in the Western world to wear spats. (The late Duke of Windsor is the only possible contender for this title.) Spats disappeared sometime around 1950 — I can't remember ever seeing anyone, in the flesh I mean, wearing spats; though they must have been around when I was a small child, and my mother's older brother Bill, the snappiest dresser in the family, was said to have worn spats as a young man. Funny how these things ebb and flow. Perhaps spats will come back. After all, they don't make any less sense, and are a great deal more sightly, than body piercings.

Right. Odd how a pierced nose (or worse) gets nary a strange glace, but don a pair of spats and let the stares begin. I'm the weirdo?