I once had a pair of four-thousand-rupee Pepe Jeans split right down the crotch while I was squatting to tie my laces at the Rajiv Chowk metro station. It was 2019, peak rush hour, and I had to walk to…
Author: Ylva Matery
Most people go to St. Lucia, see a photo of the Pitons, and immediately lose all financial common sense. I was one of those people. I spent three weeks’ worth of salary on a week-long stay because the brochure promised…
It was February 2019, and I was crossing 14th Street in Manhattan during that weird, gray window between a heavy snowfall and the inevitable slush-pocalypse. I was wearing a pair of very expensive, very sleek black leather Chelsea boots. I…
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 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….