I Finally Found a Universal, Goes-With-Everything Summer Sandal
RIP my vintage shoe collection.
The rarest thing for me is to find a brand new thing I’m into…but I did it…
There are these incredible vintage Gucci medallion sandals floating around the internet. The strappy flat shoes feel like peak late ‘90s Tom Ford-era Gucci. Sleek leather, a fat sexy gold medallion flung right on the top of the foot. It’s as if Ford himself took that crack-lodged Gucci medallion thong and translated it into phalangeal form. I imagined wearing those sandals with anything and everything: a slinky slip skirt, a barely-there mamma mia curve-skimming summer dress, or even my sturdy dungarees. Before I pressed “buy”, I zoomed in (curse the zoom-in), and saw that the shoes were actually busted and gnawed on. Worn with love and worn very much down. Obviously, the previous owner of the Gucci medallion flip-flops adored them just as much as me but actually had the chance to wear them. A lot.
I searched for more versions of the Gucci sandal. One similar pair was a Lilliputian size six! Another pair was even more in need of a deep plane shoelift. Nothing here was an option. I whipped out every term in the book: gold medallion, double-G, voluptuous disc. Nada. Nothing from Tom Ford-era Gucci; not even a whisper from his Mombasa years at YSL. But a sandal did pop up from the demented Google search algorithm: Tory Burch! The Patos sandal. A simple thing: A thong made from buffed leather with a massive, logoless, artfully bent gold medallion splayed across the top of the foot. $119…$46 less than the struggling Gucci pair.
If you know me, I buy practically everything used, secondhand, or vintage except for a few staples: Wrangler jeans that I get tailored, the Wrangler Wranchers trousers that I also get tailored, and, yes, that epically perfect Uniqlo tank. Other than that, my wardrobe is a lot of vintage plucked from the depths of a Japanese proxy site, by barter on eBay, or a winning offer on Poshmark. My shoes, too, are used. Different cultures believe wearing secondhand shoes is creepy, as if the wearer is kneading their heels into someone else’s tainted essence. Or that simply digging your bunions into someone else’s shoes is dirty. I don’t listen. Another man’s very worn shoe has long been my treasure. Or have they?
My shoe collection is a carnage of vintage footwear. Let’s trot down memory lane: There was that time when I was en route to dinner in Chinatown, and the heel on my Dior stiletto boot got caught in a pavement groove and seamlessly snapped off. I’ve spent $70 a pop replacing the spindly heel—multiple times! There were also those petite Gucci kitten heel slingbacks I wore while heading to a work meeting where the heel disintegrated. (You can see the picture at the bottom of this article). A few years back, the thong of my delicious Tom Ford-era Gucci Koolaid blue feather sandals dislodged as I walked to my former job at Vogue. I had to change into my workout sneakers on West Broadway, balancing on the side of a building so my raw-dogging heel wouldn’t touch the sidewalk. Can you imagine? Trotting around that glossy place in filthy Nikes?
Each time I step out of the house, it’s as if my heels are going to war, and they return battered, needing to be bandaged, stitched, and glued. There are even lost appendages! Wearing vintage shoes has turned me into the Florence Nightingale of footwear. As for this Tory thong flat, it’s sleek. New. Unscathed. So clean you could fry an egg on the soles. Plus, that warped gilded medallion is the elevation factor. Also, it’s true: No one’s callousses have ground into those soles, just mine. And there’s something quite literally refreshing about that. Don’t get me wrong: Long live my Tom Ford-era Gucci footwear, but perhaps these Tory Burch sandals will lead a much longer life.
Ps. I’ll always continue to buy vintage footwear. Also, watch the latest episode of NEVERWORNS with Plum Sykes!
The Tory sandals are very Elsa Peretti, in a great way. Nice score.
I’ve developed a real appreciation for Tory shoes from all the times I under-pack to visit my parents and then have to raid my mom’s closet. A lot of them are so comfortable and have really great lines. Currently keeping an eye on some out of stock loafers on eBay.