Ventilation and drying time are important to me because even the act of walking makes feet sweat. If the shoe has a leather upper, the moisture gets absorbed by the leather and, like cotton, takes a long time to dry. Festering foot sweat is, to say the least, very unhygienic. Compound that with the fact that dress shoes are the most likely kind to be worn all day without a break. Therefore my "holy grail" dress shoe would have upper panels made of some kind of felted animal fiber (wool, alpaca, etc) rather than leather/suede. As long as the fibers are all one color (i.e. not heathered), it can look as classy as leather.
Vivobarefoot shoes are big in all dimensions except where they need to be (and I'm not the first to publicly say that). Just looking at the bottom of the shoe, you can tell that it was made using a conventional shoe last. In order for my toes just to feel comfortable in the Vivos, the whole shoe has to be upsized a lot and then it's too big everywhere except in the toebox. My "holy grail" of shoe fit would be more like that of the Altra Adam, where everything is snug except the toebox.
Definitely agree. Years ago, even before going barefoot and minimalist, I had that problem. I ended buying two pairs of shoes at a time, but sometimes they still took too long to dry out. So I ended up getting a shoe dryer. It works great. I come home and put the shoes on the dryer and remove yesterday's pair and wear those the next morning.
Definitely agree. I was quite disappointed in their shoes at first. I had the Evo, which felt a bit tight. I made do with the Hamilton for a while by using a shoe stretcher. The Neo was a bit wider. Now, I wear the Dharma and Aqua Lite, which are definitely wider than the other shoes. They do have some wider models, but one has to look carefully.
