February 2018. Lower East Side. I was wearing my Stuart Weitzman Lowlands—the ones I saved three months of commission for. I stepped into a gray slush puddle that looked shallow but was actually a six-inch deep salt-water grave. I panicked….
It is currently ninety-two degrees outside and my air conditioner is making a sound like a dying lawnmower, but I am sitting here staring at a pair of La Canadienne shearling-lined waterproof boots. My husband thinks I’ve finally lost it….
It was a Tuesday in Montreal, February 2019. I was walking toward a bakery called Kouign-Amann—if you’ve been, you know the line is worth the frostbite—and I was wearing a brand new pair of $400 shearling-lined boots. They looked rugged….
It was November 2018, Chicago, and it was about five degrees outside. I was standing in the middle of a Bloomingdale’s on Michigan Avenue, sweating through my coat, while a very polite sales associate named Marcus tried to help me…
In January 2019, I stood outside the New York Public Library for a charity gala, vibrating with cold and pure, unadulterated regret. I was wearing these gorgeous, spindly velvet pumps that cost more than my monthly grocery budget. Within three…
February 2018. Lower East Side. I was wearing these quilted, faux-fur-lined “snow boots” from a brand I won’t name but it rhymes with ‘Shmeve Shmadden.’ They looked incredible with my oversized parka. They also had zero traction. I hit a…
Salt is the absolute worst. It’s not just the way it looks—that white, crusty ring that makes your $400 boots look like they were fished out of a shipwreck—it’s what it does to the fibers. Salt is like a microscopic…
It was February 2019 in Chicago. The “Polar Vortex” year. I was standing on the Brown Line platform at Chicago and Franklin, waiting for a train that the CTA app swore was two minutes away for at least fifteen minutes….
I was standing in a Midtown slush puddle in February 2021, and I could feel it. That slow, icy creep of moisture hitting my right big toe. I had just spent $280 on a pair of ‘waterproof’ leather boots from…
If I see one more person recommend a “weatherproof” suede Chelsea boot for a Northeast winter, I’m going to lose it. Seriously. We’ve been lied to for a decade by brands telling us that a thin coating of chemical spray…