A letter from a reader

At 63, I had been getting dressed from the feet up for six years

There is a way of getting dressed that nobody admits to, and I did it for six years. You do not start with the dress. You start at the shoe rack, you pick the pair your feet can stand in, and then you go and find whatever those shoes will allow. I am 63, I am not a writer, and until this summer I would have told you that was simply what happens to feet.

But three different women asked me about my shoes at a garden party on Saturday, which has never happened to me before, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Here is how it went in my house. The invitation would say lunch, or a shower, or a party in somebody’s yard, and I would open the closet and look at the dresses I liked, and then look down at the two pairs of shoes I could actually walk in, which were sneakers, and put the dresses back. Every pretty flat I had ever bought pinched across the toes by eleven and was in my purse by one. So the sneakers came out, and the pants that go with sneakers came out, and that was the outfit, whatever the invitation said.

Shoes that felt fine and looked like I had given up, or shoes that looked nice and came off under the table. For six years I picked the shoes first.

Nobody decides to dress like that. It happens quietly, one sore afternoon at a time, until the shoe rack is choosing your clothes and you have stopped noticing.

Then my sister came to lunch in a pair

My sister Carol drove up from San Antonio in June, and she came in wearing a sundress, which is not unusual, and a pair of soft sand-coloured flats, which is. Carol has worse feet than I do. She stood in my kitchen for an hour without shifting her weight once, and when I asked, she said, do not laugh, they are wider than they look and they weigh nothing.

They are called the Ysavriann, from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered the beige that evening, fully expecting to send them back.

They have not been back in the box since.

What happened at the garden party

I wore them on Saturday with a navy dress that had not been out in two summers, because the shoes had always vetoed it.

Three different women asked me where they were from before the food came out. And Sue, who has known me twenty years and does not hand out compliments, said I looked like I had somewhere better to be afterward. From Sue, that is a parade.

Here is why they work, as far as I can tell. The toe is wide and round, so nothing is pinched, which is where every other flat I owned went wrong first. They are flat and soft and the sole bends with your foot instead of arguing with it. There is a little support under the arch, which I did not expect at that softness. They weigh almost nothing and they breathe, which in a Texas August is not a small thing. And they slip straight on, no laces, no buckle, no bending. The rope cord across the front is the only decoration on them, and it is enough to make them look like a shoe I chose rather than a shoe I was prescribed.

I stood for two hours on Sue’s lawn and did not think about my feet once. I have since worn them to the store, to church, and out on the porch of an evening, and the sneakers have not been out of the closet.

Three things I have learned since

One. Wide is the whole trick. Nearly everything that had gone wrong with my flats was at the toe. Give the toes room and the rest of the shoe can be as soft and light as it likes. These are, and it is.

Two. Plain is not the same as giving up. There is nothing on these but a wide toe, a soft sand colour and a little rope cord, and somehow that reads as a decision. They go with the navy dress, the white pants and the linen skirt without a thought.

Three. Honest sizes, and a black. They run from a 5 all the way to an 11, the same wide easy shape the whole way, and they come in a black as well. I went back for the black. Carol has been told.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Ysavriann is $59.95. It was $120.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a flat this soft that also looks like something is usually priced like a boot.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and this is their final summer sale as they close this chapter of the shop.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “Wide enough for my feet at last and they still look pretty. I have worn them every day for a month and my dresses are back in rotation.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the porch with an iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have been picking the shoes first and the outfit second, you are not being difficult. You have been buying flats made for feet that are thirty years younger than yours, and quietly paying for it every afternoon. This is a flat made for the feet you actually have, and it lets you pick the dress first again.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes go first. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

I got dressed from the top down this morning. It took about a minute.

Peggy