Boot kilties

[Southern Breeze]

I've had boots with those and always left them on. This is the first time I've heard them called kilties though.

[The Wizard of BC]

They are purely decorative. They serve no purpose whatsoever.

Unlike the tassels on my yuppie shoes. They always point towards the nearest Starbucks.

[GlassMan]

We had a different kind of tab on our fire department boots. They laced into the boots and looked just like the ones you mention, but they had a zipper down the middle. The reason? That way you could easily unzip your regular boots, kick them off, and then hope into your firefighting gear and firefighting boots. Minimized changing time since we had to be fully changed before hopping on the engine. It might seem like a short amount of time to unlace a boot, but in a fire those seconds are precious.

[UmAnOnion]

Unlike the tassels on my yuppie shoes. They always point towards the nearest Starbucks.

Those things woudl be spinning like fan b;ades in NYC as there is a starbucks on every other corner around here ... woud provide some great ventilation when kilted in the summer tho... hhhmmm....

[Jerry]

Are there like the fringed leather pioeces which covered the laces on old style golf shoes?

[Moosehead]

We had a different kind of tab on our fire department boots. They laced into the boots and looked just like the ones you mention, but they had a zipper down the middle. The reason? That way you could easily unzip your regular boots, kick them off, and then hope into your firefighting gear and firefighting boots. Minimized changing time since we had to be fully changed before hopping on the engine. It might seem like a short amount of time to unlace a boot, but in a fire those seconds are precious.

Same as zips used on flying boots, known as "Alert Zips". That way, if you were snoozing comfortably in your ezboy, it was a simple matter of donning and zipping boots if the klaxon went off.