This will be the third month in a row that I have written about shoes that you need, I promise. I can apologize for that, but my advice here is sincere. This fall has been big for me, with more travel than I have had in a long time and barely enough time to go to the grocery store… let alone reset and reorganize my closet for a new season. I typically race around all week and then use my weekends to tidy up. There has been no tidying.
Shoes are THE thing that can turn things around for you. When you have no time to really think through what’s on deck for your day — let alone what you want to wear for it — you can add a sure-thing pair of shoes to the most simple, t-shirt-and-jeans, barely-an-outfit. Now you have MADE it an outfit. The same trouser and sweater can look totally different paired with a pair of sneakers or boots or heels. Shoes are the look-makers of your closet.
I am talking about one of my favorites for this purpose: look-making. It is a new iteration of an old favorite that I wrote about a few years back, the Bridgette Shoe. Now there are four more colors as well as the Bridgette Heel and I am so into it. But I’ll back up a bit in case the Heel part is a trigger for you…
Some friends of mine recently brought up “Covid feet” recently and I stopped them. What the heck was that? After a party they had all been to, they were bemoaning being “out of practice” in heels and couldn’t wait to come home and kick them off and get back in their comfy flats. What a slippery slope… comfort can sing its siren song and before you know it, you are in athleisure… which is just a nicer way of saying sweats (I am not going to quote Karl Lagerfeld here because there are many, many good reasons to wear sweats. But he said this long before 2020, so I don’t think we can only blame it on the coronavirus.) As I am writing this on a flight home from Houston, I can tell you that the airport is the place where effort in dressing goes to die. But soft clothes and flat shoes lure me as well and I feel sympathetic. I broke my toe over the summer and had to wear exclusively Birkenstocks for more than a month. Now when I slip them on, the feeling can only be described as a warm, wonderful, “honey I’m home.”
My girls all had a teacher in high school who drilled into them that your self-presentation is a social contract you keep with the world. The effort you put into your appearance is an obligation to those around you. This teacher wore lipstick every single day — the height of glamour — but would describe herself first as a feminist. She taught at the Atlanta Girls’ School, which sadly closed this past year. (RIP AGS.)
Of course, flat shoes can be elegant, too. We make so many of them — our Buckle Shoe and close cousin Bridgette Shoe both have a one-inch heel and qualify as a flat for most. (They are so similar that they are made in the same factory on the same last. They both have squishy insoles and that covered heel, but the Bridgettes have chic grosgrain bows in place of the covered buckles.) They are obviously comfortable. And they, too, will transform your t-shirt and jeans into an “outfit.”
But still there is something about wearing a pair of heels that makes me stand up taller in my heart. No amount of posture work will change my 5-foot-2 to 5-foot-3, but I feel more elevated, both literally and figuratively. I can feel Ms. Hasty smiling at me. A for effort. If you know me in real life, or if you have been reading here long enough, you know that almost everything I do is in a hurry. Impatience is hard-wired into my DNA. (The fact that two of my daughters need extra time with both mobility and conversation is one of those cosmic juxtapositions that will take me a lifetime to understand.)
My point about the Bridgette Heels is this… I can move in them. And I can move FAST. There is something about the pitch of the shoes (not just the height, which is 50mm, but the angle) that makes them easy for running around the office. Not teetering, not stomping, but moving at a real clip. I wouldn’t wear them if I was actually racing you (maybe those Spanx sneaker heels are better on the track?) but I wouldn’t hesitate to break into a dash if, say, my dog slipped out the door to chase after a squirrel.
These shoes make me feel fantastic. When I have no time to formulate an outfit, when I am taking my life not one day but one hour at a time, slipping these on changes the game. I love the Buckle Heel, of course — in fact, I have fallen back in love with the leopard recently — but somehow these are a little more of a chameleon. They don’t call as much attention to themselves. Like the lower-heeled versions, they are basically the same shoe, but topped with the very old-school grosgrain… my favorite trim in the world. Grosgrain, for me, is what ketchup is to my brother-in-law, who has been putting it on everything as long as I’ve known him. They elevate me, literally and figuratively. Whether your life is as chaotic as mine (or more!)… you just may need them. I promise.
