John Turturro approach shoes have become the unlikely constant in one of the busiest schedules in film, with the 69-year-old Severance star wearing the same pair of yellow-accented Scarpa Mescalito Planets to a basketball arena, a World Cup stadium, multiple press engagements and a film festival red carpet since June. For those of us who spend our weekends scrambling up something rocky, it is quietly thrilling to watch approach shoes migrate this convincingly into civilian life.
The Mescalito Planet is made by Scarpa, an Italian mountaineering company whose own website describes the shoe as built for “technical hikes into remote alpine objectives.” That is a long way from courtside at a Knicks championship-clinching game in San Antonio, or from a World Cup match between France and Senegal, but Turturro has been wearing them to both without a second thought.
From Red Carpets to Press Tours: How Turturro Wears His John Turturro Approach Shoes
The most recent and most-discussed outing came at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of his latest film, The Only Living Pickpocket, for which he is already generating Oscar buzz. Turturro paired the technical, rubber-soled Scarpas with a tailored mock-neck jacket, a silk-cashmere sweater, black jeans and leather-trimmed sunglasses, all from Zegna, the same label he walked the runway for last year. It is exactly the kind of ensemble that would ordinarily call for smart black dress boots, and the fact that the approach shoes worked so well is the point.
The TIFF premiere was not an isolated experiment. Across multiple stops of the press tour for The Only Living Pickpocket, and at several public appearances through the summer, the same shoes kept appearing. A single pair, worn hard and without ceremony, from one engagement to the next.
Why Approach Shoes Have Left the Crag
Approach shoes occupy a useful middle ground that trail runners and technical climbing shoes do not: they grip well on uneven ground, they handle a long walk-in over loose rock, and they look like a shoe rather than a piece of kit. That crossover quality is what has been pulling them into the wardrobes of people who rarely go near a climbing wall.
Turturro is not the first to spot this. The report of mainstream style history worth noting here is that Ralph Lauren was wearing approach-adjacent footwear years before the current wave reached the fashion press. But Turturro makes a different kind of case. Where a designer or style figure might reach for approach shoes as a considered statement, Turturro simply wears the hell out of them with everything, treating them as a reliable working boot rather than a talking point. That is a more persuasive advertisement for the category than any deliberate styling choice.
For anyone who already owns a pair of approach shoes and leaves them by the door for weekend use only, the lesson is straightforward: the rubber toe rand and sticky outsole that handle a greasy rock slab will also handle a long day on feet across mixed terrain, city included. The shoes are built for more than most people ask of them.
Scarpa produces several models in the approach category. The Rapid LT is priced at $169 and the Rapid XT at $179, both available through REI. The Mescalito Planet that Turturro has been wearing sits in the same broad family, designed around the same principle: a shoe capable of moving between technical terrain and the rest of life without either falling apart or looking out of place.
The Only Living Pickpocket continues its festival run, and Turturro’s Scarpas, in all likelihood, will be there for it.
