One shoe that I can recommend for the “barefoot” style people is the Feiyue. It is very, very padding-light (designed for martial arts), very inexpensive (~15-20 USD from Amazon.com), and doesn’t look as affected as other “barefoot” shoes can. Indeed, the rights to produce Feiyue and Feiyue-inspired shoes in the West are owned by a French company that has attempted to make Feiyue a style icon, so I’ve actually received compliments on mine on the streets.
Of course, the “stylish” French version costs 3-5x as much and doesn’t have the padding-light qualities of the original, while looking very similar, so I find myself in the somewhat unusual position of advocating that everyone buy Chinese instead for superior quality. You should be able to tell the difference because the Chinese ones are much less expensive and sized differently, whereas the French ones start at about 50 USD and use Western sizing. The Chinese ones are also only available in black and white, with both hi- and lo- top versions, while the French ones come in a wider variety of colors and styles.
One shoe that I can recommend for the “barefoot” style people is the Feiyue. It is very, very padding-light (designed for martial arts), very inexpensive (~15-20 USD from Amazon.com), and doesn’t look as affected as other “barefoot” shoes can. Indeed, the rights to produce Feiyue and Feiyue-inspired shoes in the West are owned by a French company that has attempted to make Feiyue a style icon, so I’ve actually received compliments on mine on the streets.
Of course, the “stylish” French version costs 3-5x as much and doesn’t have the padding-light qualities of the original, while looking very similar, so I find myself in the somewhat unusual position of advocating that everyone buy Chinese instead for superior quality. You should be able to tell the difference because the Chinese ones are much less expensive and sized differently, whereas the French ones start at about 50 USD and use Western sizing. The Chinese ones are also only available in black and white, with both hi- and lo- top versions, while the French ones come in a wider variety of colors and styles.