Hunting for Shoes Actually Made For Walking

THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY'LL DO

I’ve never understood the appeal of uncomfortable shoes. Beauty is pain. Great shoes are worth a few blisters. Insert Carrie Bradshaw-ism here. It could be the Midwestern in me or my height or, most likely, a downright refusal to opt into bodily suffering when unnecessary.

Living in New York is a big part of it, too. My best friend

Ruby's Recs

and I often have this conversation:

The shoes you wear in the city have to be A. incredibly comfortable and B. relatively sturdy because the shit they see means even the best pairs can’t last for more than a few seasons without repair or washing.

Enough with the problem, let’s get to the solution. Here are the shoes I swear by for big walking days. And for the record, I’m 100% fine with wearing secondhand shoes. I wore Chanel heels from TRR for my wedding!

Shoes in question

A great secondhand shoe option is the kind of shoe that would require breaking in—think pointy toe slingbacks or croc leather heeled boots. Shoes like sandals and sneakers I usually lean toward buying new. Let’s go over some examples.

These Chanel ballerinas are $310 on TRR. They’re great candidates for being resoled every few years and the color is divine: greenlight.

These Gucci sneakers are over $300, impossible to resole, and to be frank, look like a real B to break in. I’d skip and go for something a little less intense like these ballerinas or these if you’re totally adamant about the shiny red thing.