10,000 people on a waitlist for a dress shoe? Get over yourselves.
I was so sick of hearing about the Amberjack dress shoes. For whatever reason, the “world’s most comfortable dress shoe” was all over my social media feed. (Am I really getting that old?) But seriously, Aaron Rodgers wears them. That’s supposed to impress me?
Forbes called them the “Best Men’s Dress Shoe of 2025?” Yeah, okay. Sounds like someone bought lunch. I don’t know how to put it, but all the brouhaha makes me very skeptical about a product. Usually when a brand gets this much hype (GQ, Rolling Stones, Men’s Health, Forbes, etc.), it’s because they hired the right publicist, not because they make great shoes.
Like c’mon. A “dress shoe that feels like a sneaker?” I understand trying to market your product, but don’t straight-up lie. But anyway. Along the same vein of playing a song that’s stuck in you’re head, something compelled me to just buy a f***ing pair of these shoes to get the ads to stop.
So I did. Here’s what happened.
Amberjack’s Website? Red Flags All Over the Place
I get to the website, and it’s just a carousel of hype quotes from random online publishers that somebody definitely paid off. “This new Brooklyn upstart has 10,000+ people on the waitlist for their first shoe!” Seriously, give me a break.
A couple scrolls later, I see the brand’s been worn by Aaron Rodgers, Tiki Barber, the CEO of Blackstone, and Mike Huckabee (what a lineup). Is that supposed to validate the shoe? Are we just name-dropping now?
The site reads like a hype-deck:
- Award-winning
- Game-changing “dual-density foam”
- Full-grain Portuguese leather
- Skeepskin lining
- Anti-slip athletic outsole
- “Feels like a sneaker, looks like a dress shoe”
You’d think these shoes let you walk on water. And then something really annoying happened. The shoes I ordered arrived… and I liked them.
I Picked Up “The Original” For $195 (Definitely Cheaper Than My Cole Haans)…
And, unfortunately, they were nice. Annoyingly nice. Right out of the box, they actually looked and felt like a legit dress shoe: minimal, structured, polished without trying too hard. The leather was for real. The inside lining, I can’t lie, felt pretty damn good on my feet.
I still had my doubts about a $195 product claiming to be the “dress shoe, reinvented.” I wore the shoes for a week or so to see if they held up. Surely not, right? Wrong again. They broke in like a little league glove. I swear to Christ, more coworkers asked me about my shoes this week than in my entire career.
These shoes actually were comfortable. (I feel compelled to say that, obviously, they were not as comfortable as a sneaker.) I really like the wide toe box and the arch support. When six o’clock rolls around, it genuinely doesn’t feel like I’ve been in dress shoes all day.
I Even Wanted to Wear the Amberjack Shoes Outside of Work.
I wore them to dinner with my wife. I wore them to my niece’s wedding. I wore them with jeans. I’m not a big fan of their marketing, and I don’t want to be part of the problem… but I’m starting to recommend it to people.
If you’d told me two weeks ago I’d be telling people I love to buy viral internet shoes I would have laughed in your face. But here we are. The hype was dumb, but these shoes, as it turns out, are not.
Somehow, I think they actually live up to their reputation. Well, maybe not quite.
Final Verdict: Amberjack Is Overhyped. But the Shoes Are Actually Legit
The celebrity endorsements still make me want to puke. The big press awards, I’m still not buying into. And brands shouldn’t be bragging about a 10,000-person waitlist unless it’s for a kidney donation.
But the shoes don’t lie, man. The shoes feel good. I’m already thinking about ordering another pair. They’re not just comfortable, they’re built well. You can tell right out of the box that the materials are real, the support is real, and the craftsmanship is real. Maybe the internet was right this time.