What can you tell about someone from their shoelaces?

I love in Sherlock Holmes films where he goes “Given the red dust on your feet I deduce that you have visited the island nation of PaiPai known for the poison…” So is there anyway to gain deductive knowledge of someone from something you usually ignore?

Take shoe laces for example. How much can you tell about someone by their laces?
Wired has a story here where it describes runners, skaters, hacky sackers and fashion victim lacings.



Americans and Europeans lace their shoes differently. So you can probably tell which someone comes from looking at their lacing. The American lacing is more efficient

There is a list of shoelace knots here. I have not seen any of these rare ones before. Possibly you can say anyone using a secure shoe lace has a careful disposition.

This site gives more possible lacings. Ladder Lacing This type may indicate the wearer has American military training



Shoe shop lacing

This is quick to do. Someone who walks around with this lacing is probably a bit lazy as they did not change the lacing after they bought the shoe and they had the shop assistant lace the shoe for them.


Display shoe lacing
The wearer took the shoe off display and bought it. Which means they probably have size 9 feet.


Army Lacing
“used by the British, Dutch, French and Brazilian armies (and possibly others)”



one handed lacing
The person probably only has one working arm



Lock Lacing
These and other tight lacings usually indicate one foot is longer then the other. I have noticed that the foot on the non dominant side tends to be longer but I have seen no evidence on this.



From this I have learned that you can tell a lot about someone from very small things and that there seems to be a site on the internet for everything.