Dappered

Affordable Men's Style

The perfect cotton belt, and its more affordable knockoff

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Lacoste Cotton Belt – $42.90icon ($65) | Toneka Cotton Solidicon & Striped Belts – $12.90icon ($19.50)

Cotton, web, and grossgrain belts can be great.  They can also be maddening.  Find one that just doesn’t have enough friction between belt and buckle, and you’ll be readjusting the damn thing all day.  Get one that’s too loud in color, and you’ll have to stash it for 8 months out of the year in the back of your closet.

Lacoste’s cotton belticon solves both of those problems.  They come in toned down solids that deliver contrast by way of either the leather accents, silver tone rivets, or both.  And those rivets guarantee you won’t have to re-cinch every hour or so.  Rumor has it a similar model (without the roller or reenforced rivets) can be found at discount stores like TJ Maxx and Marshalls for around $25.  See the comments section over here for more on that.

At a third of the cost and without any logo (which despite the croc’s coolness, many have a zero tolerance for logos in general), Nordstrom’s Toneka cotton beltsicon are basically the same thing.  The hardware is matte black, and the buckle isn’t as streamlined, but you still get the rivets, roller, and leather accents.  Plus stripes if you’d like.

All but the white based can be worn year round.  The black/khaki striped option will look extremely sharp this fall.  Especially if you pair it up with this guy.

Comments

  1. Bought the blue/khaki (appears to be unavailable now) during the Anniversary Sale and I love it.

  2. I have the Lacoste belt above…I’ve been disappointed at how quickly the fabric starts to pull away from the rivet on the underside of the belt, where it gets stretched at angle by going around the pin and then under the roller. Still looks OK from the front, but I’m afraid a few more weeks of wear and it will separate completely. 

  3. got the Lacoste belt in red at Marshall’s for 12.50 a couple weeks back. Same roller/rivets as in the picture. They had blue/white/tan as well and a similar belt by Adidas or Nike also.

  4. Totally agree from experience that rivets are a must on these belts, although strangely my watch NATO strap does fine without them? Mystery.

    I’ve built a cotton belt collection from old cargo shorts that served me well until now. At $13, I’m getting a couple for some options. As you mentioned, some people will have a problem with the logo. I think the Croc is both an expensive and distracting add-on for $30, and I also prefer the more muted black hardware/rivets. Thanks for the nice find.

  7. Looks like my size is all unavailable, think it’s acceptable to go a size bigger and loop the extra slack down? 

  8. Looks like my size is all unavailable, think it’s acceptable to go a size bigger and loop the extra slack down? 

  13. I have a blue belt with white stripes that I wear with shorts. I only have one pair of shorts I really like right now. They’re light grey, and I wear them with blue sneakers. For jeans…I kind of want to pick up something like one of these belts, but it’s so hard to get away from just wearing a brown leather belt with jeans. I don’t think anything will ever look better, unless you’re really dressing up your jeans, in which case, black leather.