I have been thinking of getting a pair of comfortable shoes to wear in the office exclusively.
Some sort of slip on or 'slippers'.
I wonder what are your views of switching shoes in office and the decorum of wearing comfortable shoes/non standard leather dress shoes in office.
My 2 cents:
To begin with, there is no place for 'uncomfortable' dress shoes. If the shoes aren't comfortable, they should be ditched (figuratively, u can put up on ebay of course), or suck it up and hope the shoes season up in time to come.
Of course, one cannot expect the same level of comfort in your dress shoes compared with sneakers or slippers. Else you should go for the hush puppies and geox etc, which I believe is not the case for you.
Finally down to actually answering your question: IMHO, I don't think it's an appropriate practice, regardless of gender. I believe some Japanese companies have such a culture amongst the guys but otherwise it's very rare amongst guys as compared to ladies.
I observed that at some point over the last decade or slightly further back, this practice somehow crept into the office culture amongst the ladies. As with many things, habits uncorrected over time become acceptable simply because 'no one pointed out they were wrong'.