10 Best business casual trainers for men: For comfortable office style

The brand’s Clean 90 shape – so named for the precise 90° angle of its toe cap – would look smart with a pair of tailored trousers or black jeans. Plus, its sturdy sole unit means it’ll work equally well with looser or slimmer silhouettes.

Best for summer: Adidas Samba OG Trainers

Three years after critics speculated that it was about to hit its peak, the Adidas Samba hasn’t gone anywhere – in fact, it’s proven to be the indomitable sneaker style of the decade. And for good reason: thanks to its 70s-meets-90s aesthetic and understated design, it’s hard to find anything that it doesn’t look good with, from turned-up jeans to unstructured suits. Let sneaker nerds complain that these are oversaturated. They’re here to stay.

This version, in a woven mesh, is a perfectly breezy summer sneaker, but still feels elevated enough to be workplace friendly, thanks to the suede toe cap and leather trims. If your workplace dress code skews more casual, lean into their retro styling – these would look great worn with shades of brown.

Best designer: Maison Margiela Replica Low Top Sneaker

Of course, if you’re looking for the dialed-up, ultra-premium, platonic ideal of the GAT shape, you should turn to the Maison Margiela Replica. First introduced in 1999, it was originally made as part of the brand’s replicas of notable vintage garments. Since then, it’s found its way into the working wardrobes of stylish men everywhere.

It smartly streamlines the original shape, making for a sleeker silhouette. These come in almost every permutation of colour, fabric, and finish, but our money is on the classic black leather: the suede panels on the upper are enough to be recognizable without the need for a hefty logo. Almost thirty years in, these show little sign of losing their place as one of the original and best designer sneakers.

Best weather-proof: Adidas Samba Shell Trainers

A pretty good rule of thumb for making something look cooler is to make it out of shell fabric. After all, brands like Prada have built entire business empires from it. Here, the classic Adidas Samba gets smartened up and made more office-friendly thanks to its dark grey shell upper. The added bonus? It means these are much less likely to mark or take on water damage, which is the instant killer for work-friendly trainers. So for spring, fall, or any time you’re likely to get caught in inclement weather, these are a safer bet.

Like all Sambas, these look best with a slightly abbreviated trouser: a sliver of a gap between the hem of your trousers and the upper of the shoe will make them look a ton smarter.

More business casual trainers we love

How we test and review products

Style is subjective, we know – that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white trainers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.

Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing – from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasises our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.

How we make these picks

We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.

To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.

We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.

Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.

Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you.