What's a Split Toe?

Sara writes below in one of the comments that she was initially confused by what a split-toe shoe is, and she speculates that "that probably refers to a cut and some stitching up the leather in the front". She is correct (well, mostly). It refers to a real or artificial seam in the middle of the toe of the shoe. The picture above is of the JL Paris Campus loafer, the shoe that I was wearing yesterday (in a different color). Notice the seam in the middle of the toe, and notice that it actually is a seam: it connects two different pieces of leather. On some shoes, however, there are not two different pieces of leather that are being joined. There's just one that has been pinched and stitched through. The resulting detail looks like a seam, but it's entirely decorative. See this Alden shoe for an example of this second type of split-toe.