Shoesday Real Talk: Loafers Are *So* Fall, But Is That It?

Shoe shopping can feel like such a surprise attack on a woman’s sense of personal evolution. I know this to be true because every fall, it gets just a little bit chilly and I proclaim with the conviction of O.J. Simpson’s lawyer that this will be the season I finally wear loafers.

Invariably, every season, I end up buying a pair. I entertain myself by wearing them once or twice but by the time it’s cold, I mean really cold, the loafers have been rejected, dejected, left out for obliteration by sleet and its more popular cousins.

You’d think that I would learn but I never do. It’s just…why? Why do I have this flip-switch moment every single season? And really now, why in the good name of all that is leather do I seriously believe that this season is going to be different from every other season? I wish I was writing retrospectively but I’m still a pawn in this pathetic game of cat and mouse, Leandra and shoe. Just two weeks ago, in fact, I found myself hovering over a display ledge at the new Céline shop on Wooster Street where I contemplated the lace up loafers that have been populating Philo’s fall offering for at least the past three years. I didn’t buy them last year, or the year before, but this year, impulse got the best of me and within 15 minutes, I was the vaguely proud new owner of ox-blood brogues, ostensibly made for a cool woman but incidentally to be worn by, uh, me.

So you know, I have worn them more than twice thank-you-very-much. But I’m more concerned with what my propensity for something I come back to over and over — in spite of less-than-favorable results — indicates about a) my shopping habits, b) my style, or how much of it is informed by aspiration and c) which, again, is me.

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On my shopping habits, I think maybe they’re called “habits” for a reason. Perhaps this ritual of looking at loafers and then buying them signifies something that has nothing to do with shoes or my feet at all. Maybe while some women welcome pumpkin spice lattes to commemorate seasonal changes, I use loafers. But obviously there’s more to it. I’m not using a form of footwear or garment that I don’t believe is technically in line with my “personal style,” so it is possible that my style doesn’t quite reflect what actually makes me feel good or comfortable. I say this because, as you know, after I buy the loafers I don’t actually wear them.

Maybe, though, maybe this is a much larger problem. And like Carrie Bradshaw’s one night stand with a psychologist’s-patient-in-the-waiting-room-cum-dalliance before me, I’m only enthralled by the material things that excite me until we can consummate our relationship (as in, until I actually buy them), at which point I lose complete interest.

This is better, I suppose, than the anterior Bradshaw’s problem, though, right? At least I don’t pick the wrong things.

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